'Books  by  Grander  Matthews 

BIOGRAPHIES 
Shakspere  as  a  Playwright 
Moliere,  His  Life  and  His  Works 


ESSAYS  AND  CRITICISMS 

French  Dramatists  of  the  19th  Century 
Pen  and  Ink,  Essays  on  subjects  of  more 

or  less  importance 
Aspects  of  Fiction,  and  other  Essays 
The  Historical  Novel,  and  other  Essays 
Parts  of  Speech,  Essays  on  English 
The  Development  of  the  Drama 
Inquiries  and  Opinions 
The  American  of  the  Future,  and  other 

Essays 
Gateways  to  Literature,  and  other  Essays 


SHAKSPERE 
AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


Jn    £#n  />„'/ .'/'„>/.;.    I .."/. 


SHAKSPERE 
AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


BY 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

PROFESSOR    OF    DRAMATIC    LITERATURE    IN    COLUMBIA    UNIVERSITY 
MEMBER   OF   THE   AMERICAN   ACADEMY   OF   ARTS   AND   LETTERS 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  1913 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


Published  October,  1913 

GIFT        f 


THOMAS   1     NIC  CASE 


•    •  •    •  _. 
•  •  •  •  ••  • 

•••••••   . 

•    •  •  •    •  • 


• «    1  . 


•    •     •  •    < 


TO 
MY    COLLEAGUES 

OF   THE 

DEPARTMENT   OF   ENGLISH   AND    COMPARATIVE   LITERATURE 

COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 

IN   GRATEFUL   ACKNOWLEDGMENT    OF 

FRIENDLY   COUNSEL 


MjLt>o« 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

A  few  years  ago  a  French  critic  pointed  out  the  signifi- 
cant fact  that  the  British  had  chosen  to  consider  Shak- 
spere  chiefly  as  a  poet,  whereas  the  French  had  preferred 
to  treat  him  rather  as  a  psychologist  and  the  Germans  as 
a  philosopher.  There  could  be  no  stronger  testimony  to 
the  diversity  of  Shakspere's  appeal  than  this  divergence 
of  approach.  And  yet,  poet  as  he  was,  and  philosopher 
and  psychologist,  Shakspere  was  first  of  all  a  playwright, 
composing  plays  to  be  performed  by  actors  in  a  theater 
before  an  audience.  He  has  been  superabundantly  dis- 
cussed as  a  poet,  as  a  philosopher,  and  as  a  psychologist; 
but  he  has  been  less  adequately  criticized  as  a  playwright, 
pure  and  simple.  Perhaps  it  is  in  the  United  States  that 
this  aspect  of  his  genius  has  been  most  often  considered. 

This  book  has  been  born  of  the  belief  that — thanks  to 
the  untiring  investigations  of  devoted  scholars — our  stock 
of  information  about  the  Elizabethan  playhouse  has  now 
made  it  possible  to  relate  Shakspere  more  intimately  to 
the  theater  of  his  own  time,  to  the  actors  of  his  own  com- 
pany, and  to  the  contemporary  spectators  for  whose  pleas- 
ure he  composed  his  plays.  An  attempt  has  here  been 
made  to  disentangle  the  fundamental  principles  which 
guided  him  in  the  construction  of  his  successive  plays,  to 
analyze  the  elements  of  his  craftsmanship,  and  to  trace  the 

vii 


viii  PREFATORY  NOTE 

development  of  his  dramaturgic  technic.  To  spy  out  all 
the  secrets  of  Shakspere's  art  might  demand  an  insight 
equal  to  his  own;  yet  it  ought  not  to  be  difficult  to  dis- 
cover the  more  obvious  causes  for  the  superlative  success 
of  his  greater  plays,  in  which  he  handled  his  material  with 
superb  mastery, — and  also  to  perceive  now  and  again  one 
or  another  of  the  reasons  for  the  comparative  ineffective- 
ness of  the  less  interesting  pieces. 

In  this  study  I  have  sought  to  apply  to  Shakspere  the 
method  of  analysis  already  employed  in  my  critical  biog- 
raphy of  Moliere.  Unfortunately,  we  know  far  less  about 
the  facts  of  Shakspere's  life  than  we  do  about  the  details 
of  Moliere's  career;  yet  I  believe  that  it  is  feasible  to 
trace  the  growth  of  the  English  poet  as  a  practical  play- 
wright almost  as  clearly  as  we  can  follow  the  equally  im- 
portant evolution  of  the  French  dramatist.  And  as  this 
book  is  designed  to  deal  with  Shakspere  only  as  a  play- 
wright, attention  has  here  been  focused  on  the  plays  which 
are  most  instructive  as  plays,  rather  than  on  those  which 
display  other  qualities  of  his  genius  more  splendidly.  For 
example,  the  'Comedy  of  Errors,'  a  comparatively  empty 
play  of  his  immaturity,  is  in  a  sense  more  significant  than 
'  King  Lear,'  one  of  the  noblest  monuments  of  his  loftiest 
period,  because  the  'Comedy  of  Errors'  discloses  his  early 
conquest  of  the  art  of  construction,  whereas  'King  Lear,' 
however  appealing  it  may  be  in  its  poetry,  is  less  rigor- 
ous in  its  plotting. 

Where  I  have  been  conscious  of  indebtedness  to  any 
specific  predecessor  in  the  discussion  of  Shakspere's  stage- 
craft, I  have  declared  my  obligation,  and  I  have  been  able 


PREFATORY  NOTE  ix 

often  to  quote  the  exact  words  which  I  have  found  sug- 
gestive. But  the  mass  of  Shaksperian  criticism  is  now  so 
overwhelming,  that  I  cannot  hope  to  have  given  credit  to 
all  those  by  whose  labors  I  have  profited;  yet  I  should 
be  remiss  if  I  did  not  acknowledge  a  special  debt  to  Pro- 
fessor Thomas  R.  Lounsbury,  to  Professor  A.  C.  Bradley, 
and  to  M.  Jules  Jusserand. 

Brander  Matthews. 

April  23,  1913. 


Note. — The  author  desires  also  to  express  here  his 
obligation  to  Mr.  E.  Hamilton  Bell  for  the  care  and  the 
skill  with  which  the  maps  of  Shakspere's  London  have 
been  prepared. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 
I. 

PAGE 

Shakspere's  Life i 

II. 

Shakspere's  Theater 16 

III. 

Shakspere  as  Reviser  and  as  Imitator       38 

IV. 

His  Earliest  Comedies     . 

62 

V. 

His  Earliest  Chronicle-Plays 

85 

VI. 

'Romeo  and  Juliet'     . 

102 

VII. 

The  Falstaff  Plays    . 

117 

VIII. 

The  Romantic-Comedies  . 

142 

IX. 

Shakspere  as  an  Actor   . 

.     168 

X. 

Shakspere's  Actors 

.     185 

XL 

'Hamlet' 

,     202 

XII. 

The  Comedy-Dramas   . 

219 

XIII. 

'Othello' 

237 

XIV. 

The  Plays  from  Plutarch 

254 

XV. 

'King  Lear' 

276 

XVI. 

Shakspere  and  His  Audienc 

e 

294 

XI 


xii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTl  R  PAGE 

XVII.     'Macbeth' 313 

XVIII.     The  Dramatic-Romances        ....  329 

XIX.     The  Plays  in  Collaboration     .      .      .  347 

XX.     Conclusion 367 

Notes  on  the  Maps 385 

Index 389 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

i.     Shakspere  .....        Frontispiece 

By  John  Q.  A.  Ward. 

2.  Restoration  of  the  Fortune  Theater 

By  Walter  H.  Godfrey.  Facing  page       28 

3.  Map  of  London  in  Sixteenth  Century  1 

4.  Map  of  London  in  Twentieth  CenturyJ 

On  both  of  which  are  shown  the  localities  with  which 
history  or  tradition  has  connected  Shakspere. 

At  end  of  volume 


SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

CHAPTER  I 

SHAKSPERE'S  LIFE 

I 

This  book  is  not  a  biography  of  Shakspere;  it  is  a 
study  of  his  stage-craft.  The  story  of  his  life  has  been 
set  forth  again  and  again  by  ambitious  chroniclers;  and 
every  possible  source  of  information  seems  to  have  been 
searched  for  new  light  on  his  family,  on  his  friends,  on 
his  business  associates  and  on  the  events  of  his  own 
career.  Probably  we  are  now  in  possession  of  more  in- 
formation about  him  than  about  any  other  man  of  his 
time  who  did  not  take  part  in  public  affairs.  And  yet 
there  is  still  validity  in  the  often  quoted  assertion  of 
Steevens:  "All  that  is  known  with  any  degree  of  cer- 
tainty concerning  Shakspere  is,  that  he  was  born  at 
Stratford-on-Avon,  married  and  had  children  there;  went 
to  London  where  he  commenced  actor  and  wrote  poems 
and  plays;  returned  to  Stratford,  made  his  will,  died, 
and  was  buried."  The  diligent  investigations  of  a  cen- 
tury have  delighted  us  with  no  really  vital  fact  to  add  to 
those  thus  summarily  stated.  Research  has  provided  us 
with  a  host  of  welcome  supplements  to  this  fundamen- 
tal knowledge  and  it  has  enabled  us  to  reconstruct  a 
richer  background  for  Shakspere;  but  the  most  signifi- 
cant facts  are  still  those   that  Steevens  tersely  stated. 


2  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

We  are  still  without  any  document  as  detailed  and  as 
trustworthy  as  the  invaluable  register  which  was  kept  by 
an  actor  of  Moliere's  company  and  which  records  for  us 
the  exact  sequence  of  his  plays  and  the  daily  receipts  at 
the  doors  of  his  theater. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  patient  seekers  after  fresh 
information  have  not  been  more  resolute  or  more  inde- 
fatigable than  the  devisers  of  new  theories,  ready  to 
welcome  a  novel  fancy  in  default  of  a  novel  fact.  And 
as  a  result  of  this  riot  of  assumption  it  is  not  easy  nowa- 
days to  disentangle  the  solidly  ascertained  truth  about 
Shakspere  from  the  wind-blown  suppositions  with  which 
his  biography  has  been  inflated.  Not  a  few  of  these 
ingenious  conjectures  may  be  dismissed  as  patently 
absurd;  but  some  of  them  are  plausible  and  alluring. 
We  are  at  liberty,  if  we  choose,  to  accept  them  as  highly 
probable;  yet  ought  we  always  to  distinguish  them 
sharply  from  the  indisputable  facts.  However  interest- 
ing and  illuminating  they  may  appear,  they  remain  con- 
jectures only;  and  as  conjectures  only  they  must  be  set 
aside  when  we  are  bent  on  resting  solely  upon  the  secure 
basis  of  the  incontrovertible.  This  must  serve  as  the 
excuse  for  a  compact  narrative  of  Shakspere's  life  in  so 
far  as  that  is  needful  here  in  explanation  of  his  develop- 
ment as  a  dramatist. 

William  Shakspere  was  born  at  Stratford-on-Avon  in 
April,  1564.  His  father,  John  Shakspere,  was  one  of  the 
leading  citizens  of  the  little  town  at  the  time  of  the  poet's 
birth,  serving  as  an  alderman  in  1565  and  as  a  bailiff  in 
1568.  John  Shakspere  knew  how  to  write,  although 
often  he  preferred  to  make  his  mark;  his  wife,  Mary 
Arden,  although  she  came  of  a  well-to-do  family,  could 
not   even   sign   her  name.     As  the  son  of  a  freeholder 


SHAKSPERE'S   LIFE  3 

William  Shakspere  had  a  right  to  enter  the  Grammar 
School  at  the  age  of  seven.  It  is  not  certain,  but  it  is 
highly  probable  that  he  was  sent  to  this  school.  Yet  it 
is  unlikely  that  he  remained  there  to  the  end,  since  he 
could  enter  only  in  1571  and  his  father's  affairs  became 
involved  shortly  thereafter;  in  1574  John  Shakspere  was 
unable  to  pay  a  town-contribution,  and  he  also  began  to 
mortgage  his  property.  It  was  in  1575,  when  Shakspere 
was  eleven,  that  Queen  Elizabeth  visited  Kenilworth.  And 
it  was  in  1582,  when  Shakspere  was  only  eighteen,  that 
he  married  Anne  Hathaway,  eight  years  his  senior.  This 
was  in  November;  and  in  May  of  the  following  year  his 
first  child,  Susanna,  was  baptized.  Before  he  was  twenty- 
one,  twins  were  born  to  him,  Hamnet  and  Judith. 

For  the  next  eight  years  of  Shakspere's  life  we  have 
very  few  facts.  A  company  of  actors  came  to  Stratford 
in  1587;  and  by  1592  Shakspere  had  already  won  a  po- 
sition in  London  as  an  actor  and  an  adapter  of  plays. 
In  1593  he  published  ' Venus  and  Adonis';  and  at  the 
end  of  this  year  he  appeared  before  the  queen  as  a  mem- 
ber of  Burbage's  company.  In  1594  he  published  his 
'Lucrece,'  which  he  dedicated  to  the  Earl  of  Southamp- 
ton, to  whom  he  had  already  inscribed  'Venus  and  Adonis.5 
His  version  of  'Titus  Andronicus'  must  have  been  pro- 
duced not  later  than  this  year,  since  it  was  then  printed 
in  quarto.  Quarto  editions  of  other  of  his  plays  were 
frequently  issued  after  1597;  and  we  know  he  had  been 
constantly  engaged  in  playwriting,  because  in  1598  Meres 
gives  us  the  names  of  six  comedies  and  of  six  tragedies 
already  performed.  That  Shakspere  was  then  doing  well 
as  an  author,  as  an  actor,  and  probably  also  as  a  share- 
holder in  the  theater,  is  a  fair  inference  from  the  fact 
that  in  1596  his  father  applied  for  a  grant  of  arms  and 


4  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

that  in  1597  Shakspere  purchased  New  Place  at  Strat- 
ford. His  wife  and  his  children  continued  to  reside  in 
the  town  where  he  had  been  born;  and  he  seems  to  have 
been  looking  forward  already  to  the  day  when  he  could 
return  thither.  His  only  son,  Hamnet,  died  in  1596,  the 
year  before  he  bought  New  Place. 

In  1598-9  the  Theater  in  which  Burbage's  company 
acted,  was  pulled  down  and  a  new  playhouse,  the  Globe, 
was  built  on  Bankside.  Shakspere  was  then  a  sharer  in 
the  management.  It  was  in  the  ensuing  years  that 
he  produced  his  greatest  plays,  first  the  most  delight- 
ful of  his  comedies,  'Much  Ado  about  Nothing,'  'As 
You  Like  It'  and  'Twelfth  Night,'  and  a  few  years  later, 
the  most  searching  of  his  tragedies,  'Hamlet,'  'Othello' 
and  'Macbeth.'  When  James  I  took  the  throne  in  1603 
the  company  of  which  Shakspere  was  a  member,  was 
licensed  as  the  King's  Players.  In  1605  Shakspere,  who 
is  earlier  on  record  as  a  purchaser  of  real  estate  in  Lon- 
don and  as  a  lender  of  money,  was  rich  enough  to  buy 
half  the  lease  of  the  Stratford  tithes  for  a  term  of  years. 
In  1607  his  elder  daughter  was  married;  and  in  the  same 
year  his  younger  brother,  Edmund,  also  an  actor,  died. 
The  next  year  a  grandchild  was  born  to  him.  Probably 
it  was  about  this  time,  when  he  was  forty-five,  that  he 
gave  up  acting  and  retired  to  Stratford  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  We  do  not  know  the  year  when  he  first  went  up 
to  London  and  we  do  not  know  the  year  when  he  finally 
left  it.  It  is  likely  that  while  he  was  living  in  London 
he  made  occasional  visits  to  Stratford;  and  it  is  certain 
that  after  he  had  retired  to  his  native  town  he  still  took 
brief  trips  to  the  capital,  where  he  owned  property  and 
where  he  had  an  interest  in  two  theaters. 

His  'Sonnets'  were  published  in  1609,  apparently  with- 


SHAKSPERE'S  LIFE  5 

out  his  authority.  Some  of  them,  and  perhaps  all  of 
them,  had  been  written  years  before.  In  161 3  he  in- 
creased his  real-estate  holdings  in  London.  In  that  year 
also  the  Globe  Theater  was  burnt  down  during  a  per- 
formance of  'Henry  VIII.'  In  February,  1616,  his 
younger  daughter  was  married.  In  March  of  that  year 
he  executed  his  will;  and  on  April  twenty-third  he  died 
at  Stratford,  being  buried  two  days  later  in  the  chancel 
of  the  church.  He  was  just  fifty-two  years  of  age,  hav- 
ing lived  one  year  longer  than  the  span  of  life  allotted 
to  Moliere.  At  his  death  he  had  a  fourteenth  share  in  the 
Globe  Theater,  the  house  occupied  by  the  company  to 
which  he  had  belonged  and  for  which  he  had  written  all 
his  plays, — except  possibly  one  or  two  of  his  earliest 
adaptations.  He  owned  a  seventh  share  in  the  Black- 
friars'  Theater,  which  was  also  occupied  by  his  company. 

II 

This  is  all  we  know  about  his  life,  little  as  it  is;  and  the 
mystery  of  his  genius  is  not  revealed  by  these  meager 
details.  We  know  nothing  about  his  education,  about 
his  position  in  his  father's  house,  about  his  domestic 
relations,  about  his  own  family.  All  we  have  are  the 
dates  of  his  marriage,  of  the  birth  of  his  first  child  and 
of  the  twins  later,  of  his  only  son's  death,  and  of  the  suc- 
cessive weddings  of  his  two  daughters.  Legal  documents 
of  one  kind  or  another,  which  give  us  these  facts,  supply 
us  also  with  a  few  more  dates,  interesting  enough  in 
themselves  but  not  elucidating.  Tradition,  which  is 
rarely  trustworthy,  has  contributed  not  a  little  gossip — 
about  his  having  in  his  youth  taken  part  in  a  poaching 
adventure  on  the  lands  of  a  wealthy  family  near  Strat- 


6  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

ford,  and  about  a  carouse  with  Ben  Jonson  after  his 
retirement  to  his  native  town. 

But  nothing  has  yet  come  to  light  to  tell  us  how  he 
spent  the  trying  years  in  London,  before  he  made  a  place 
for  himself  as  actor  and  as  author.  Did  he  begin  out- 
side the  theater  by  holding  the  horses  of  the  gallants 
who  mounted  to  the  boxes?  Or  did  he  begin  inside  the 
theater  in  the  humble  office  of  call-boy?  Did  he  serve  an 
apprenticeship  to  a  scrivener  and  so  pick  up  a  smatter- 
ing of  law-terms?  How  and  when  did  he  make  the 
acquaintance  of  Southampton?  And  did  that  nobleman 
ever  gratify  him  with  the  present  of  a  large  sum  of  money? 
Are  the  sonnets  revelations  of  the  poet's  own  experiences 
and  was  the  dark  story  of  intrigue  that  we  may  dimly 
make  out  in  them  a  record  of  the  poet's  personal  misad- 
ventures in  love  and  in  friendship?  Or  are  the  sonnets 
merely  poetic  experiments,  in  a  manner  then  popular 
among  the  rimesters  of  the  time  literary  exercises  in 
which  the  poet  was  playing  with  the  accepted  themes 
borrowed  by  the  Elizabethan  sonneteers  from  the  French 
and  Italian  lyrists? 

As  to  each  of  these  questions  we  have  a  right  to  our 
own  opinion;  and  it  must  remain  an  opinion  only,  since 
there  can  be  no  certainty  about  it.  In  default  of  fact 
we  are  reduced  to  inference;  and  inference  is  as  dangerous 
as  it  is  attractive.  Some  things  there  are  which  we  may 
accept  as  indisputable.  However  he  may  have  won  his 
way  into  the  theater  and  in  whatever  capacity  he  may 
have  begun  his  career  in  it,  he  soon  established  himself 
as  a  worthy  member  of  the  company,  gaining  admission 
after  a  while  into  the  limited  group  of  sharers,  who  may 
be  considered  as  the  associated  managers  of  the  theater. 
However  he  may  have  begun  as  a  playwright,  apparently 


SHAKSPERE'S  LIFE  7 

by  patching  up  old  pieces,  he  soon  took  courage  to  com- 
pose original  plays;  and  he  was  industriously  engaged  in 
dramatic  authorship  for  a  score  of  years  at  least.  Thirty- 
seven  plays  are  now  attributed  to  him,  although  his 
exact  share  in  half  a  dozen  of  these  is  still  a  matter  of 
debate.  And  we  do  not  know  the  order  in  which  his 
plays  were  written,  no  two  investigators  agreeing  upon 
the  strict  sequence  of  their  composition.  Shakspere  him- 
self refrained  from  publishing  even  a  single  one  of  his 
plays;  and  no  text  can  be  accepted  as  representing  his 
own  manuscript. 

One  deduction  from  all  the  evidence  may  be  taken  as 
fully  warranted.  Shakspere  had  an  unusual  gift  for 
friendship.  He  made  friends  early  and  he  kept  them 
late.  He  was  a  man  whom  other  men  liked  and  to  whom 
they  went  for  help.  The  dedications  of  ' Venus  and 
Adonis'  and  'Lucrece'  to  Southampton  prove  that  a 
younger  man  of  high  rank  had  early  admitted  him  to 
intimacy.  Bequests  in  his  own  will  and  in  the  wills  of 
his  associates  of  the  theater  prove  that  his  fellows  held 
him  in  affectionate  regard.  The  publication  of  his  plays 
in  folio,  seven  years  after  his  death,  by  the  pious  care  of 
two  surviving  comrades,  proves  that  they  lovingly  cher- 
ished his  memory.  Ben  Jonson's  conversations  with 
Drummond  are  evidence  that  Shakspere  had  been  able 
to  bind  to  him  a  poet  as  touchy  and  as  self-valuing  as 
the  author  of  the  'Alchemist,'  despite  all  their  striking 
differences  in  character  and  in  dramatic  theory. 

Apparently  he  was  as  free  from  affectation  and  pre- 
tense as  was  Moliere,  as  friendly  and  companionable. 
He  liked  to  mix  with  his  fellow-men  and  to  meet  them 
affably,  with  no  assumptions  of  superiority,  no  aus- 
terity  of  demeanor   and    no    aloofness    of  manner.     As 


8  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Moliere  used  to  foregather  with  Boileau  and  the  rest  at 
the  Croix  d'Or,  so  Shakspere  frequented  the  Mermaid: — 

What  things  have  we  seen 

Done  at  the  Mermaid!  heard  words  that  have  been 

So  nimble,  and  so  full  of  subtle  flame, 

As  if  that  every  one  from  whence  they  came 

Had  meant  to  put  his  whole  wit  in  a  jest, 

And  had  resolved  to  live  a  fool  the  rest 

Of  his  dull  life. 

So  Beaumont,  in  his  poetical  epistle  to  Jonson,  recorded 
their  meetings;  and  Fuller — writing,  it  must  be  admitted, 
nearly  half  a  century  after  Shakspere's  death — asserted 
that  "many  were  the  wit-combats  betwixt  him  and  Ben 
Jonson,  which  two  I  behold  like  a  Spanish  great  Gallion 
and  an  English  man  of  War:  Master  Jonson  (like  the 
former)  was  built  far  higher  in  learning,  Solid,  but  Slow  in 
his  performances.  Shakspere,  with  the  English  man  of 
War,  lesser  in  bulk,  but  lighter  in  sailing,  could  turn  with 
all  tides,  tack  about,  and  take  advantage  of  all  winds, 
by  the  quickness  of  his  Wit  and  Invention." 


Ill 

Fuller's  assertion  that  Jonson  was  built  far  higher  in 
learning  is  supported  by  Jonson's  own  remark  that 
Shakspere  had  "small  Latin  and  less  Greek."  This  may 
be  taken  as  an  admission  that  Shakspere  had  some  Greek 
and  more  Latin,  even  though  his  learning  may  have 
seemed  but  little  to  Jonson,  who  was  himself  a  scholar 
of  omnivorous  reading  and  of  indefatigable  absorption. 
If  Shakspere  went  to  the  Grammar  School  at  Stratford, 
he  might  have  acquired  a  smattering  of  Greek,  although 


SHAKSPERE'S  LIFE  9 

there  is  scant  evidence  of  this  in  any  of  his  writings. 
And  if  he  was  able  to  attend  the  school  for  a  term  of  years, 
he  would  have  been  well  grounded  in  Latin.  He  quotes 
from  the  Latin  grammar  in  use  at  that  time;  but  he  may 
never  have  gained  more  than  the  ability  to  pick  out  the 
meaning  of  a  Latin  play.  Perhaps,  indeed,  he  had  not 
attained  even  to  this,  since  he  seems  to  have  preferred 
to  make  use  of  an  English  translation. 

Whether  or  not  Shakspere  went  to  the  Grammar  School 
at  Stratford,  he  never  had  that  solid  training  in  philosophy 
which  Moliere  received  at  the  College  de  Clermont.  And 
he  never  approached  the  vast  erudition  for  which  Jon- 
son  unceasingly  toiled.  What  more  especially  separates 
Shakspere  from  Jonson  is  that  he  never  takes  what 
may  be  called  the  scholar's  point  of  view,  an  attitude 
which  is  habitual  to  the  younger  man.  Jonson  reveals 
not  only  the  scholar's  satisfaction  in  being  supported  by 
chapter  and  verse  but  also  the  scholar's  abhorrence  of 
careless  inaccuracy.  Shakspere  is  consistently  careless 
and  inaccurate  in  matters  of  scholarship.  He  is  reck- 
less in  a  manner  impossible  to  any  one  trained  to  tread 
the  stony  path  of  learning.  He  has  no  certain  knowledge 
in  geography,  in  history  and  in  natural  history;  and  he 
never  thinks  of  taking  any  trouble  to  look  things  up  and 
to  get  them  right.  He  seems  to  be  perfectly  satisfied 
with  what  runs  off  his  pen,  confident  that  his  audiences 
were  little  likely  to  be  particular  about  trifles  or  to  pos- 
sess information  he  lacked  himself. 

He  reveals  a  complacent  ignorance  of  the  geography 
of  Italy  in  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  and  in  the 
'Tempest,'  of  that  of  Bohemia  in  'Twelfth  Night,'  of 
that  of  Scotland  in  'Macbeth'  and  of  that  of  Denmark 
in  'Hamlet.'     He  never  feels  constrained  to  follow  the 


io  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

strict  historical  sequence  of  the  events  which  he  might 
carry  over  from  the  chroniclers  and  the  historians;  he 
takes  the  liberty  of  transposing  episodes  at  will  to  suit 
his  own  purpose.  He  conforms  to  the  medieval  habit  of 
assuming  that  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  past  dif- 
fered but  little  or  not  at  all  from  the  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  the  present;  and  as  a  result  of  this,  he  is  abundant 
in  flagrant  anachronisms.  He  bestows  nunneries  and  ab- 
besses on  the  ancient  Greeks;  and  he  lends  clocks  and 
cannon  to  the  ancient  Romans.  He  never  thinks  of 
correcting  North's  blundering  Decius  for  Plutarch's  Deci- 
mus  Brutus,  or  even  North's  impossible  Calphurnia  for 
Calpurnia.  He  accepts  an  inaccurate  pronunciation  of 
Andronicus,  wresting  it  from  that  which  it  had  in  Rome. 
He  has  been  lavishly  belauded  for  his  delicate  obser- 
vation of  nature  and  for  his  precise  knowledge  of  the  habits 
of  plants;  and  it  may  be  acknowledged  that  when  he 
discourses  of  flowers  and  trees  he  is  standing  on  solid 
ground,  for  he  had  kept  his  eyes  open  during  his  War- 
wickshire boyhood,  as  he  kept  them  open  also  during  his 
London  manhood.  But  even  if  he  may  be  generally 
exact  in  his  references  to  the  plants  of  his  native  county, 
he  is  often  inexact  in  his  reference  to  birds  and  beasts. 
He  makes  the  singing  nightingale  a  female,  and  he  im- 
plies that  the  swan  swims  in  salt  water.  He  suggests 
that  the  cuckoo  can  bite  off  the  head  of  the  hedge  spar- 
row. He  asserts  that  the  adder  is  deaf,  that  the  mole  is 
blind,  and  that  the  toad  is  venomous — errors  due  to 
the  acceptance  of  traditional  beliefs.  He  has  no  hesita- 
tion in  availing  himself  of  the  so-called  unnatural  natu- 
ral history,  which  was  a  medieval  inheritance,  and 
which  had  been  popularized  more  recently  by  Lyly.  He 
does  not  shrink  from  crediting  the  toad  with  a  precious 


SHAKSPERE'S  LIFE  n 

jewel  in  his  head  or  from  bestowing  upon  the  crocodile 
the  faculty  of  hypocritic  tears. 

Very  likely  he  knew  better  and  these  inaccuracies  in 
botany  and  in  zoology  were  due  to  his  utilization  of 
folk-beliefs,  crystallized  in  earlier  literature.  Like  the  in- 
accuracies in  geology  and  in  chronology,  they  may  be 
admitted  frankly;  and  they  need  not  be  apologized  for, 
since  they  are  most  of  them  of  little  importance.  The 
dramatic  poet  is  not  called  upon  to  possess  the  scientific 
accuracy  of  the  college  professor.  But,  trifles  as  they 
are,  they  indicate  that  Shakspere  never  attained  to 
the  high  and  severe  standard  of  scholarship,  a  thing 
wholly  foreign  to  his  temperament.  He  is  free  from  any 
taint  of  the  pedantry  which  can  be  detected  in  both  Bacon 
and  Jonson.  His  schooling,  inferior  to  theirs,  is  sufficient 
for  him.  His  learning  is  not  book-learning;  it  is  derived 
from  life  itself.  He  may  lack  much  that  they  know, 
but  he  knows  much  also  that  they  could  never  acquire. 
"Men  of  genius,"  Brunetiere  declared  when  he  was 
dealing  with  Balzac,  "know  many  things  without  hav- 
ing studied  them,  and  we  who  know  these  same  things 
only  because  we  have  learned  them — we  insist  that  they 
must  have  studied  just  as  we  did." 

Shakspere  has  not  only  the  intuition,  the  insight  and 
the  imagination  of  the  poet,  he  has  also  a  personal  power 
of  sponge-like  absorption,  of  acquiring  all  sorts  of  things 
from  all  sorts  of  people.  Even  if  he  never  takes  the 
scholar's  point  of  view  and  even  if  he  blunders  carelessly 
in  trivial  details,  he  manages  to  accumulate  abundant 
stores  of  information  to  sustain  his  later  knowledge  and 
to  support  his  ultimate  wisdom. 


12  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


IV 

One  reason — indeed,  probably  the  chief  reason — for  the 
paucity  of  our  information  about  Shakspere's  life,  is  that 
nobody  then  thought  it  necessary  to  keep  a  record  of  his 
sayings  and  doings,  because  nobody  then  suspected  his 
supremacy.  It  would  be  pleasant  for  us  to  feel  that  his 
contemporaries  recognized  and  appreciated  his  greatness; 
but  it  is  a  fact  that  they  did  not.  And  it  would  be  un- 
reasonable for  us  to  blame  them  for  not  perceiving  then 
what  is  so  plain  to  us  now.  "Great  men,"  Lecky  has 
reminded  us,  "are  like  the  great  mountains  which  are 
surrounded  by  lower  peaks  that  often  obscure  their 
grandeur  and  seem  to  a  near  observer  to  equal  or  even 
to  overtop  them.  It  is  only  when  seen  from  far  off  that 
their  true  dimensions  are  fully  realized,  and  they  soar  to 
heaven  above  all  rivals/' 

Thus  it  was  that  Cervantes  and  Moliere  were  not  appre- 
ciated in  their  own  lifetimes,  popular  as  they  were  and 
warmly  praised,  even  if  not  for  the  finer  qualities  that 
we  now  discover  in  their  works.  But  Shakspere  labored 
under  a  double  disadvantage  from  which  Cervantes  and 
Moliere  were  free.  In  the  first  place,  his  plays  were  not 
published  for  his  contemporaries  to  read  in  the  study; 
they  were  to  be  seen  only  on  the  stage;  and  in  the  second 
place,  plays  were  not  then  held  to  be  literature  but  rather 
a  sort  of  ephemeral  journalism.  Such  literary  reputa- 
tion as  Shakspere  achieved  in  his  own  lifetime  was  de- 
rived rather  from  his  two  poems  than  from  his  twoscore 
plays.  Even  to-day  the  literary  critic  is  inclined  to  be 
skeptical  as  to  the  literary  value  of  a  play  which  he  has 
seen  only  in  the  theater  and  which  he  has  not  been  able 


SHAKSPERE'S   LIFE  13 

to  consider  carefully  in  the  library.  The  drama  and  the 
"  show-business "  are  still  twins,  as  they  always  have 
been;  and  the  show-business  often  has  disreputable  ac- 
companiments which  cannot  but  injuriously  affect  our 
opinion  of  the  drama  itself.  Under  the  Tudors  not  a  few 
of  the  circumstances  of  the  theater  were  shocking  to  the 
Puritan,  and  abhorrent  to  men  of  intellectual  and  moral 
fastidiousness.  Whatever  the  reason,  there  is  no  doubt 
of  the  fact  that  the  stage-plays,  which  we  now  hold  to 
be  the  chief  glories  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  were  treated  with 
surprising  contempt,  expressed  as  frankly  in  Sidney's 
*  Defence  of  Poesie'  as  in  Hall's  satires. 

Even  Shakspere's  fellow-playwrights,  who  paid  him 
the  sincere  compliment  of  imitation,  did  not  perceive  his 
triumphant  superiority  over  all  his  rivals.  They  be- 
stowed on  him  the  same  uncritical  praise  that  they 
also  lavished  on  his  contemporaries,  unsuspicious  that  he 
differed  in  kind  as  well  as  in  degree.  In  fact,  they  often 
seem  to  hold  him  less  important  than  certain  of  these 
contemporaries.  As  late  as  161 2  Webster  praised  Chap- 
man and  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  each  with  an 
apt  phrase  of  laudation,  and  then  dismissed  collectively 
"the  right  happy  and  copious  industry"  of  Shakspere, 
Dekker  and  Heywood.  Perhaps  this  is  really  more  sig- 
nificant than  the  total  omission  of  Shakspere's  name 
from  the  "Address  to  the  Reader"  which  Shirley  prefixed 
to  the  folio  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  in  1647.  Yet 
attention  may  be  drawn  to  Shirley's  assertion  that  to 
mention  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  is  "to  draw  a  cloud 
upon  all  former  names,"  since  the  book  containing  their 
plays  is,  "without  flattery,  the  greatest  monument  of  the 
scene  that  time  and  humanity  have  produced." 

To  us  Shakspere  is  the  mighty  creator  of  character  and 


i4  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  marvelous  reader  of  the  human  soul;  but  to  the  men 
of  his  own  time,  even  to  the  contemporary  dramatists 
who  had  most  occasion  to  be  familiar  with  his  works, 
he  is  primarily  a  story-teller,  who  contrived  interesting 
dramas  of  a  varied  ingenuity  and  of  an  approved  popu- 
larity, an  honest  craftsman  to  be  praised  for  his  "copious 
industry."  There  is  no  jealousy  in  this,  for  his  con- 
temporaries had  little  suspicion  of  any  superiority  to  ex- 
cite their  envy.  Indeed,  the  tone  of  the  allusions  to  him 
during  his  lifetime  and  in  the  years  immediately  follow- 
ing his  death — and  these  allusions  have  been  sedulously 
sought  for  and  carefully  set  in  order — is  almost  uniformly 
complimentary.  The  praise  which  is  scant  for  the  play- 
wright, although  not  infrequent  for  the  poet,  is  cordial 
and  abundant  for  the  man.  There  are  good  words  in 
plenty  for  Shakspere's  courtesy  and  friendliness;  and 
there  are  fine  words  for  his  narrative  poems;  but  there 
are  few  really  appreciative  words  for  his  plays. 

When  his  tragedies  and  comedies  come  in  for  commen- 
dation, as  they  do  occasionally,  the  praise  is  perfunc- 
tory,or  at  best  undiscriminating.  For  published  laudation 
founded  upon  a  more  genuine  appreciation  of  Shak- 
spere's abiding  qualities  we  must  wait  for  Ben  Jonson's 
verses  prefixed  to  the  folio  of  1623.  And  even  that  noble 
and  heartfelt  recognition  conforms  to  the  current  con- 
vention of  vague  and  extravagant  eulogy,  which  was 
then  held  to  be  proper  in  dedicatory  verse.  Jonson  sets 
Shakspere  above  Lyly  and  Kyd  and  Marlowe,  and  puts 
him  by  the  side  of  iEschylus,  Sophocles  and  Euripides. 
But  this  is  quite  the  sort  of  thing  that  was  then  expected 
of  the  poet  who  praised  a  dead  friend  in  the  forefront  of 
the  dead  friend's  works.  Loftily  phrased  as  is  Jonson's 
commendation,  it  is    deficient   in   critical  specifications; 


SHAKSPERE'S   LIFE  15 

it  is  eulogy  at  large;  it  singles  out  few  of  the  quali- 
ties for  which  we  now  hold  Shakspere  in  highest  esteem. 
It  is  only  fair  to  conclude  that  if  Ben  Jonson,  writing 
within  seven  years  after  Shakspere's  death,  had  not  yet 
discovered  the  secure  basis  of  Shakspere's  future  fame, 
this  foundation  was  then  hidden  from  contemporaries 
less  gifted  in  criticism  than  Jonson  himself. 


CHAPTER  II 

SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER 
I 

It  was  at  the  end  of  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth 
century  that  the  writer  of  one  of  the  chapters  devoted  to 
Shakspere  in  the  composite  'Cambridge  History  of  Eng- 
lish Literature'  risked  a  remark  which  must  have  struck 
with  amazement  every  student  of  the  dramatic  art.  "It 
is,  of  course,  quite  true  that  all  of  Shakspere's  plays  were 
written  to  be  acted;  but  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
this  is  much  more  than  an  accident  arising  from  the  fact 
that  the  drama  was  the  dominant  form  of  literature." 
The  critic  then  admits  that  it  was  "a  happy  accident" 
— not  because  it  gave  occasion  for  the  revelation  of  Shak- 
spere's power  as  a  dramatist  able  to  handle  at  once  char- 
acter and  situation  as  only  the  dramatist  can — but 
"because  of  the  unique  opportunity  which  this  form  gives 
of  employing  both  the  vehicles  of  poetry  and  of  prose." 

This  astounding  assertion  discloses  a  total  inability 
to  understand  the  special  province  of  the  drama;  and  it 
reveals  a  blank  incapacity  to  perceive  the  lofty  position 
which  Shakspere  holds  as  a  dramatic  poet.  Yet  it  is 
only  the  reduction  to  the  absurd  of  an  opinion  hinted  at 
by  Johnson  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  held  by  Lamb 
in  the  nineteenth.  "It  may  seem  a  paradox,"  Lamb 
declared,  "but  I  cannot  help  being  of  opinion  that  the 
plays  of  Shakspere  are  less  calculated  for  performance  on 

16 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  17 

a  stage  than  those  of  almost  any  other  dramatist  what- 
ever. Their  distinguished  excellence  is  a  reason  that 
they  should  be  so.  There  is  so  much  in  them  which 
comes  not  under  the  province  of  acting,  and  with  which 
eye  and  tone  and  gesture  have  nothing  to  do." 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  every  great  dramatist  may 
lose  something  of  his  subtlety  and  of  his  suggestion  when 
his  works  are  seen  only  on  the  stage,  in  consequence  of  the 
possible  inadequacy  of  any  particular  performance,  or 
even  in  consequence  of  the  necessary  swiftness  of  repre- 
sentation in  the  theater.  There  is  more  depth  and  more 
breadth  in  the  masterpieces  of  Sophocles,  of  Shakspere  and 
of  Moliere  than  can  be  apprehended  at  once  when  the 
plays  are  performed  before  us.  It  may  even  be  acknowl- 
edged frankly  that  there  is  a  possible  diminution  of 
stature  and  even  a  vague  vulgarization,  almost  unavoid- 
able in  any  bodying  forth  by  flesh-and-blood  actors  of 
the  characters  created  by  the  poet's  towering  imagina- 
tion. But  the  gain  is  far  greater  than  the  loss.  The 
plays  of  Shakspere,  like  those  of  Sophocles  and  of 
Moliere,  were  strictly  "calculated  for  the  stage";  and 
it  is  only  on  the  stage  itself  that  they  disclose  their  essen- 
tial dramatic  quality.  They  are  designed  with  an  eye 
single  to  actual  performance;  and  it  is  in  this  actual 
performance  that  they  most  clearly  reveal  themselves  to 
be  truly  dramatic.  Sophocles  could  not  publish  his  plays; 
Shakspere  did  not  publish  his;  and  Moliere  expressed 
his  willingness  to  keep  his  unpublished,  preferring  to 
rely  rather  on  the  effect  they  had  produced  in  the  theater. 

The  late  Professor  Jebb  dwelt  on  the  enlarging  effect  of 
seeing  the  'CEdipus'  of  Sophocles  acted;  the  visual  and  the 
auditory  impressions  received  in  the  theater  broadened 
and  strengthened  the  opinions  derived  from  analysis  in  the 


18  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

library;  and  the  stately  tragedy  took  on  an  unsuspected 
amplitude  when  it  was  represented  by  living  performers, 
as  if  it  had  waked  itself  to  life.  Similar  testimony  has 
been  proffered  by  all  the  other  students  of  classical  lit- 
erature who  have  had  the  profitable  pleasure  of  behold- 
ing a  Greek  tragedy  or  a  Latin  comedy  actually  per- 
formed. No  doubt  there  may  be  delicacies  of  expression, 
sublimities  of  poetry,  subtleties  of  psychologic  analysis, 
which  evade  observation  in  the  representation;  but  the 
massive  movement  of  Greek  tragedy  and  the  ingenious 
rapidity  of  Latin  comedy  are  exposed  completely  only 
w7hen  the  plays  are  witnessed  in  the  theater.  What  is 
true  of  the  'CEdipus'  of  Sophocles  is  true  also  of  the 
'Ghosts'  of  Ibsen,  which  lays  bare  its  secret  sources  of 
power  only  when  its  appalling  story  is  unrolled  slowly 
before  us  on  the  stage. 

To  judge  a  play  from  the  printed  page  alone  is  like 
trying  to  estimate  the  value  of  a  picture  solely  from  a 
photograph  of  it.  The  full  color  is  visible  only  in  the 
playhouse,  which  is  the  gallery  where  its  author  designed 
it  to  be  exhibited.  Shakspere  is  one  of  the  greatest  of 
poets,  and  he  can  be,  on  occasion,  one  of  the  greatest  of 
playwrights.  Being  a  great  poet,  he  sometimes  tran- 
scends the  narrower  limits  of  the  theater.  But  he  "cal- 
culated" his  plays  for  the  stage,  and  it  is  no  "accident" 
that  all  of  them  "were  written  to  be  acted."  In  his  day 
the  drama  was  "the  dominant  form  of  literature";  and 
this  was  fortunate  for  him,  since  he  was  a  born  drama- 
tist, and  since  the  drama  is  the  only  form  in  which  his 
full  genius  could  find  ample  and  adequate  expression. 
Like  all  other  dramatists  he  wrote  his  plays  to  be  per- 
formed by  actors  in  a  theater  and  before  an  audience. 
Indeed,  we  may  be  more  precise  and  insist  that  Shak- 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  19 

spere  wrote  nearly  all  his  plays  to  be  performed  by  one 
particular  group  of  actors,  that  to  which  he  belonged; 
in  one  particular  theater,  that  of  which  he  was  one  of  the 
managers;  before  one  particular  audience,  that  which 
was  composed  of  the  Londoners  who  were  his  compa- 
triots and  his  contemporaries  and  whose  opinions  and 
sentiments  he  shared. 


II 

It  is  one  of  Bacon's  wise  remarks  that  truth  comes  out 
of  error  much  more  rapidly  than  it  comes  out  of  con- 
fusion. When  we  try  to  call  up  a  picture  of  the  specific 
Elizabethan  playhouse  for  which  Shakspere  composed 
his  plays,  we  have  before  us  a  dense  fog  of  error  and 
confusion.  The  error  is  due  largely  to  our  insufficient  in- 
formation; and  the  confusion  is  a  natural  result  of  earlier 
efforts  to  interpret  information  far  less  sufficient  than 
that  which  we  now  possess.  The  conditions  of  a  theat- 
rical performance  in  the  sixteenth  century  were  not  those 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  earlier  attempts  were 
made  to  elucidate  Shakspere's  works,  although  the  first 
editors  seem  not  to  have  suspected  that  the  Elizabethan 
playwrights  were  unable  to  indicate  a  change  of  place 
by  the  easy  eighteenth-century  device  of  shifting  the 
scenery,  running  on  a  pair  of  flats  and  running  them  off 
again  as  often  as  might  be  useful.  And  the  conditions 
of  the  twentieth  century  differ  widely  from  those  of  the 
eighteenth.  In  our  theater  to-day  we  see  Shakspere's 
plays  necessarily  modified  and  even  mangled  to  fit  them 
to  the  picture-frame  stage  of  our  modern  playhouses, 
and  we  read  them  in  the  library  in  editions  modified  and 
even   mangled    to   adjust   them   to   the   suppositions   of 


20  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

editors  familiar  only  with  the  post-Restoration  methods 
of  performance. 

The  result  of  this  is  that  we  in  the  twentieth  century 
have  had  our  view  of  the  actual  theater  of  the  sixteenth 
century  obscured  by  the  mistaken  guesses  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  editors.  We  have  been  taught  to  sup- 
pose that  Shakspere  chopped  up  his  plays  into  a  tumult- 
uous sequence  of  changing  scenes.  But  it  is  more  than 
doubtful  whether  he  himself  conceived  any  of  his  plays 
(except  possibly  half  a  dozen)  in  the  five-act  form;  and 
it  is  certain  that  he  did  not  himself  imagine  them  as 
separated  into  a  host  of  episodes,  each  of  which  took 
place  in  a  separate  spot.  In  the  folio  of  1623,  which 
seems  to  be  the  earliest  text  derived  from  Shak- 
spere's  own  manuscripts,  only  seventeen  out  of  thirty- 
seven  plays  are  divided  into  five  acts;  and  in  no  one  of 
the  quartos  published  in  his  lifetime,  and  conforming  to 
the  actual  performance  more  or  less  closely,  is  there  war- 
rant for  any  splitting  up  of  the  play  into  a  heterogeny 
of  scenes  such  as  annoys  us  in  almost  every  modern 
edition.  For  this  division  into  acts  and  this  subdivision 
into  scenes  we  are  indebted  to  the  mistaken  zeal  of  Rowe. 
He  it  was  who  is  responsible  for  the  needless  absurdity 
of  suggesting  that  successive  episodes  of  the  fifth  act 
of  ' Antony  and  Cleopatra'  are  shown  in  a  "room  in  the 
palace"  and  in  "another  room  in  the  palace,"  and  that 
the  action  of  the  middle  acts  of  'As  You  Like  It'  shifts 
uselessly  from  a  part  of  the  Forest  of  Arden  to  "another 
part  of  the  forest." 

The  cause  of  Rowe's  error  must  be  sought  in  the  fact 
that  he  looked  back  to  the  stage  of  the  sixteenth  century 
and  interpreted  it  by  means  of  the  methods  of  the  stage 
of  the  eighteenth  century — an  attitude  which  could  not 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  21 

fail  to  cause  misunderstanding.  We  can  attain  to  a 
satisfactory  knowledge  of  the  Elizabethan  theater  only 
when  we  renounce  all  vain  effort  to  look  back  and  when 
we  do  our  best  to  look  forward — when  we  endeavor  to 
interpret  the  stage  of  the  sixteenth  century  by  means  of 
the  methods  of  the  stage  of  the  fourteenth  century.  It 
was  from  the  volunteer  playwrights  of  the  Middle  Ages 
that  the  professional  playwrights  of  Elizabeth's  reign 
had  inherited  their  traditions.  The  drama  of  the  six- 
teenth century  is  in  many  of  its  aspects  far  closer  to  the 
drama  of  the  fourteenth  century  than  it  is  to  the  drama 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  After  the  Restoration,  when 
the  English  drama  had  come  under  the  influence  of 
Moliere,  it  was  almost  modern  in  its  methods,  because  it 
was  adjusted  to  a  theater  which  was  almost  modern  in 
its  conditions;  but  under  Elizabeth  and  James  the 
English  drama  was  almost  medieval,  because  it  was 
adjusted  to  a  theater  which  was  still  semi-medieval, 
to  say  the  least.  It  is  therefore  only  by  giving  up  all 
prejudices  derived  from  our  modern  playhouse,  with  its 
picture-frame  stage,  and  by  trying  to  trace  the  steady 
development  of  the  platform-stage  of  the  Middle  Ages 
down  to  its  inclusion  in  the  half-roofed  playhouse  of 
Elizabeth,  that  we  can  correct  error  and  avoid  confusion. 
The  development  of  the  drama  in  the  Middle  Ages  may 
be  divided  into  three  periods.  It  had  its  source  in  the 
desire  of  the  clergy  to  make  visible  to  their  ignorant  con- 
gregations the  most  significant  episodes  of  the  gospel 
story.  It  was  a  direct  outgrowth  of  the  attempt  to  show 
in  action  in  the  church,  as  part  of  the  service,  the  salient 
passages  of  the  Scripture  narrative  as  the  reading  of  that 
had  been  appointed  for  certain  days  of  the  Christian 
year.     At   first   the   manger  was  set  up  in  the  chancel 


22  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  the  Resurrection  was  exemplified  near  the  crypt;  a 
little  later  a  reserved  space  was  set  apart  for  Herod's 
throne,  and  other  reserved  spaces  for  other  indications 
of  specific  localities.  The  congregation  filled  the  church, 
and  in  the  midst  of  them  the  performers  moved  to  and 
fro,  as  the  sequence  of  events  might  require,  entering 
at  one  door  and  going  out  at  another,  passing  from  the 
manger  to  the  tomb  and  to  the  other  "stations"  (as  the 
reserved  spaces  are  called  which  indicated  a  specific 
place).  These  stations  were  scattered  through  the  church, 
each  being  in  that  part  of  the  edifice  which  was  best 
suited  for  it.  Therefore  the  action  took  place  on  a  neu- 
tral ground — that  is,  anywhere  in  the  midst  of  the  massed 
spectators,  who  broke  their  ranks  to  allow  the  performers 
to  pass  from  one  part  of  the  church  to  another. 

When  the  mystery  was  full-grown,  it  became  too  cum- 
bersome for  the  church;  and  in  time  it  was  thrust  out  to 
be  taken  over  by  laymen,  who  substituted  the  vernacular 
of  the  people  for  the  Latin  of  the  priests.  But  in  this 
second  period  there  were  no  changes  of  method,  except 
those  which  were  imposed  by  adjustment  to  the  novel 
conditions  of  representation  outdoors.  The  perform- 
ance took  place  in  the  open  street  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
crowd  surrounding  the  stations,  which  were  either  plat- 
forms or  floats  (called  "pageants").  The  acting  took 
place  on  a  neutral  ground — that  is,  anywhere,  now  in  the 
highway  and  now  on  one  or  another  of  the  pageants,  of 
which  there  were  sometimes  two  for  a  single  episode.  In 
the  course  of  years  the  mystery,  which  was  the  Bible- 
story  in  dialogue  and  in  action,  suggested  the  dramatiza- 
tion of  saints'  lives  (which  were  called  miracle-plays)  and 
of  allegories  (which  were  called  moralities).  The  comic 
element,  which  had  been  introduced  early  into  the  myster- 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  23 

ies,  was  amplified  in  the  miracle-plays,  and  especially  in 
the  moralities,  the  Vice  being  the  accepted  name  for  the 
chief  humorous  character.  In  this  second  period  of  the 
medieval  drama  the  actors  were  still  amateurs,  craftsmen 
belonging  to  the  various  trade  gilds. 

Then  in  the  early  years  of  the  Renascence,  while  the 
gilds  still  gave  their  performances — which  survived  to 
the  end  of  the  Tudor  rule — small  companies  of  strolling 
actors  came  into  existence,  professionals,  at  last,  however 
crude  their  performance  might  be.  Their  repertory  con- 
sisted at  first  of  scenes  from  the  mysteries  and  miracle- 
plays,  and  of  moralities  at  once  didactic  and  comic. 
Sooner  or  later,  they  applied  the  method  of  the  drama- 
tized gospel  story  and  saint's  life  to  historic  narratives 
and  even  to  popular  fiction.  They  presented  the  life  of 
a  hero,  setting  forth  all  the  striking  events  in  his  career, 
without  artistic  selection  and  without  artistic  compres- 
sion. They  were  still  representing  a  story  in  dialogue 
and  in  action  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  could  not  read. 
Their  methods  were  essentially  those  which  had  been  in 
use  in  the  church  centuries  earlier;  and  when  they  acted 
in  the  open  fields  they  set  up  as  many  stations  as  they 
might  need  to  indicate  special  places;  but  most  of  the 
acting  was  done  on  a  neutral  ground  in  the  midst  of  the 
spectators,  and  the  scene  might  be  supposed  to  be  any- 
where, since  often  there  was  no  indication  of  locality  even 
in  the  dialogue — unless  this  was  imperatively  demanded 
by  some  circumstances  of  the  story. 


24  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


III 

Out  of  these  little  bands  of  strollers  grew  the  companies 
of  actors  whom  we  find  plying  their  trade  under  the 
Tudors.  They  were  sometimes  very  few  in  number,  per- 
haps a  scant  half-dozen,  like  the  Players  welcomed  to 
Elsinore  by  Hamlet.  They  were  allowed  to  travei. 
through  England  only  when  they  were  able  to  claim  the 
protection  of  some  great  nobleman.  They  called  them- 
selves the  Admiral's  men  or  the  Chamberlain's  men,  as 
the  case  might  be.  They  acted  wherever  they  could,  in 
the  baronial  hall  or  in  the  town  hall,  on  the  village  green 
or  in  the  courtyard  of  the  city  inn.  The  English  inn 
was  then  often  a  hollow  square  with  galleries  running 
around  inside;  and  of  all  the  places  where  the  strolling 
actors  performed  the  inn  yard  was  the  most  convenient 
for  their  purpose.  They  set  up  their  rude  platform  at  the 
back  and  hung  a  curtain  or  two  from  the  edge  of  the 
gallery  above;  the  commoner  sort  of  spectators  stood  all 
around  this  platform,  in  the  open  air,  while  any  ladies  and 
gentlemen  who  might  be  tempted  to  see  the  performance 
took  rooms  in  the  inn  and  sat  out  on  the  galleries  which 
looked  down  on  the  yard. 

As  certain  of  the  strolling  companies  grew  in  numbers 
and  in  repute  they  were  enabled  to  increase  their  reper- 
tory. Plays  were  written  for  them,  providing  parts 
specially  suited  to  their  leading  actors.  They  still  trav- 
eled to  the  provincial  towns;  but  they  naturally  pre- 
ferred to  appear  in  the  capital  as  frequently  as  possible. 
London  had  the  largest  floating  population  and  the  most 
commodious  inn  yards.  But  the  performances  in  the 
inns  often  attracted  the  least  desirable  elements  of  the 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  25 

city;  and  many  of  the  magistrates  of  London  were  Puri- 
tans, who  had  no  relish  for  any  form  of  amusement  and 
who  had  a  special  distaste  for  the  stage.  These  officials 
sought  at  first  to  restrict,  and  at  last  to  interdict  the 
strolling  companies  from  performing  in  any  inn  within 
the  limits  of  the  city  of  London.  The  actors  appealed  for 
support  to  their  avowed  protectors,  the  noblemen  whose 
servants  they  were,  and  to  the  officers  of  the  court,  who 
were  never  in  sympathy  with  the  Puritans.  In  time,  how- 
ever, the  authorities  of  the  city  made  the  situation  so  diffi- 
cult that  the  actors  resolved  to  be  independent.  They 
erected  playhouses  for  themselves  just  outside  the  city 
limits,  and  therefore  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  the  mag- 
istrates. 

In  1576  James  Burbage  built  the  Theater  in  the 
grounds  of  the  suppressed  monastery  of  Holywell,  near 
Finsbury  Fields,  in  the  parish  of  Shoreditch.  Although 
this  new  playhouse,  the  first  to  be  erected  in  England,  was 
not  actually  in  the  city  of  London,  it  was  convenient  of 
access  to  the  citizens.  Its  success  was  immediate;  and  in 
the  same  year  or  the  next  a  second  playhouse  was  built 
not  far  distant.  And  before  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury at  least  half  a  dozen  other  playhouses  had  been 
erected,  some  of  them  in  the  opposite  outskirts  of  the 
city  in  Southwark,  on  the  other  side  of  the  Thames.  In 
1599  the  original  Theater  was  taken  down  and  rebuilt 
on  the  Bankside  as  the  Globe.  The  Londoners  were  thus 
provided  with  more  playhouses  than  the  inhabitants  of 
any  other  European  capital.  Until  1629  Paris  had  only 
a  single  theater,  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne;  and  even  when 
Moliere  died  in  1673  there  were  only  three  (the  companies 
of  which  were  united  in  1684  to  form  the  Comedie- 
Francaise). 


26  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

This  multiplication  of  playhouses  in  the  capital  is  only 
one  proof  of  the  extraordinary  interest  in  dramatic  per- 
formances which  was  then  evident  in  England.  There 
was  acting  everywhere — by  the  professional  actors  in  Lon- 
don and  in  the  chief  towns,  by  rustic  amateurs  on  the 
village  greens,  by  the  gilds  at  the  annual  festivals,  by  the 
choir-boys  of  the  chapels,  by  the  lawyers  of  the  Inns  of 
Court  and  by  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  were  in 
attendance  on  the  queen.  And  no  one  of  her  subjects 
was  fonder  of  a  play  or  of  a  mask  or  of  any  sort  of  spec- 
tacle than  Elizabeth  herself. 

It  was  owing  to  this  almost  universal  liking  for  the 
drama  in  all  its  aspects  that  the  novel  venture  of  erecting 
a  special  building  for  the  performance  of  plays  was  suc- 
cessful from  the  start  and  that  the  example  of  Burbage 
was  swiftly  followed  by  others.  One  result  of  the  action 
of  the  city  magistrates  in  driving  the  actors  outside  of  the 
legal  boundaries  of  London  was  certainly  unexpected  by 
them.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  half  a  dozen  London  inns 
had  been  largely  given  up  to  acting,  the  performances  of 
the  strolling  companies  could  hardly  have  been  more 
than  occasional  and  intermittent.  But  in  the  new  play- 
houses the  performances  were  regular  and  permanent; 
and  this  soon  compelled  the  actors  to  enlarge  their  reper- 
tory. So  long  as  they  were  strollers,  staying  in  any  one 
place  for  but  a  few  performances,  they  needed  only  a  few 
plays;  but  as  soon  as  they  were  settled  in  a  theater  of 
their  own,  appealing  always  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
same  town,  they  were  forced  to  bring  out  new  plays  in 
rapid  succession,  as  the  older  pieces  became  too  familiar 
to  the  limited  number  of  possible  spectators. 

With  the  steady  increase  in  the  number  of  theaters  in 
London,  there  was  a  corresponding  increase  in  the  de- 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  27 

mand  for  new  dramas.  Plays  of  an  enduring  popularity 
were  kept  in  the  repertory,  of  course,  to  be  performed  as 
frequently  as  might  be  profitable.  But  new  plays  were 
needed  every  week  or  every  fortnight  by  one  theater  or 
another.  Some  of  these  new  pieces  were  put  together 
by  this  or  that  actor  in  the  theater  itself;  and  others  were 
improvised  by  the  clever  young  fellows  who  came  up 
to  London  from  the  universities.  For  threescore  years 
before  the  closing  of  the  theaters  by  the  Puritans  there 
was  an  incessant  consumption  of  new  plays;  and  in  no 
period  of  the  history  of  the  drama  has  there  ever  been  a 
more  marvelous  productivity.  This  was  due  directly  to 
the  building  of  the  original  Theater  outside  of  the  juris- 
diction of  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London.  Perhaps,  there- 
fore, it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  Puritans'  hostility 
to  stage-plays  was  an  exciting  cause  of  the  extraordinary 
outflowering  of  the  English  drama  under  Elizabeth. 

IV 

When  James  Burbage  built  the  original  Theater  he  had 
no  model.  He  knew  nothing  about  the  theaters  of  Greece 
and  Rome;  and  even  if  he  had  been  familiar  with  their 
construction  they  would  have  given  him  no  guidance. 
What  he  wanted  was  to  have  a  place  as  commodious  for 
the  performance  of  plays  as  the  inn  yard  which  he  was 
abandoning;  and  the  playhouse  which  he  put  up  may  be 
described  as  an  inn  yard — without  the  inn  itself.  He 
may  have  been  influenced  also  more  or  less  by  the  rings 
for  bull-baiting  and  bear-baiting — circular  wooden  am- 
phitheaters with  an  open  arena.  The  later  Fortune 
Theater  was  at  first  square,  eighty  feet  wide  and  eighty 
feet   long.      But    most    of  the    earlier    playhouses    were 


28  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

circular  or  polygonal.  One  or  two  galleries  ran  around 
the  walls,  to  supply  boxes  for  the  more  fastidious  play- 
goers. The  stage  was  a  large  platform  jutting  out  into 
the  middle  of  the  open  yard  in  which  most  of  the  spec- 
tators stood. 

In  the  Fortune  this  stage  was  forty-three  feet  square, 
and  it  therefore  occupied  more  than  one-quarter  of  the 
area  of  the  yard.  It  was  crossed  at  the  back  by  a  gal- 
lery, and  from  the  edge  of  this  gallery  there  hung  tapes- 
tries, which  screened  off  the  rear  part  of  the  stage,  and 
which  could  be  parted  or  looped  up  to  disclose  an  inner 
room.  Apparently  there  were  also  two  doors,  one  at  the 
right  and  the  other  at  the  left.  The  gallery  immediately 
over  the  stage  was  made  to  serve  as  a  balcony  or  as  the 
upper  windows  of  a  house  whenever  these  might  be  called 
for  by  the  action  of  the  play.  This  part  of  the  gallery 
may  have  been  let  as  a  box,  when  it  was  not  actually 
required.  There  was  a  trap-door  in  the  floor  of  the  stage, 
to  serve  as  a  grave  or  a  well,  or  to  permit  the  rising  of  a 
ghost.  Two  columns  on  the  stage  supported  a  roof 
(called  the  "shadow"  or  the  "heavens")  which  sheltered 
the  actors  from  the  weather.  The  galleries  were  also 
thatched  or  tiled,  but  the  yard  was  open  to  the  sky.  In 
one  of  the  later  playhouses — that  erected  in  the  Bear  Gar- 
den— the  stage  was  on  trestles,  so  that  it  could  be  taken 
away  when  the  building  was  to  serve  for  bull-baiting  or 
bear-baiting.  To  us  nowadays  such  a  use  seems  a  strange 
degradation  for  a  temple  of  the  drama;  but  we  may  re- 
mind ourselves  that  the  theater  of  Dionysus  in  Athens 
was  also  the  scene  of  the  annual  cock-fight. 

It  is  evident  that  the  Elizabethan  playhouse  differed 
widely  from  our  comfortable  modern  theater.  It  had  no 
roof,  and  the  majority  of  the  spectators  had  no  seats.     It 


RESTORATION  OF  THE  FORTUNE  THEATER 

By  Walter  H.  Godfrey 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  29 

had  no  artificial  light  and  no  curtain  to  separate  the 
players  from  the  playgoers.  Indeed,  the  gallants  and 
men  about  town  sat  on  the  stage  itself,  on  the  right  and 
left  sides  of  the  platform,  leaving  an  open  space  in  the 
center  for  the  actors;  and  a  similar  custom  survived  in 
the  French  theaters  even  a  century  later.  Above  all,  the 
stage  had  no  scenery,  although  it  had  elaborate  proper- 
ties of  all  kinds.  Here,  again,  it  followed  the  tradition 
of  the  medieval  mystery;  in  the  later  Middle  Ages,  the 
stations  (called  pageants  in  England  and  mansions  in 
France)  were  sometimes  provided  with  small  buildings  or 
parts  of  buildings,  a  portico,  for  instance,  serving  to  indi- 
cate a  church  or  a  temple.  These  summary  representa- 
tions of  a  special  place  were  not  the  flimsy  framework  of 
a  scene-painter,  for  the  art  of  scene-painting  did  not 
come  into  existence  until  well  on  in  the  Renascence;  they 
were  the  solid  work  of  the  house-carpenter  adorned  with 
appropriate  colors  by  the  house-painter.  Nothing  as  sub- 
stantial or  as  pretentious  as  this  was  possible  to  the  stroll- 
ing companies,  acting  in  the  inn  yards;  and  their  eager 
and  tolerant  audiences  did  not  expect  it.  When  these 
strolling  companies  settled  down  in  playhouses  of  their 
own,  neither  the  players  nor  the  playgoers  foresaw  the 
possibility  of  such  scenery  as  we  demand  to-day;  and  as 
they  knew  nothing  of  any  such  thing,  they  felt  no  need 
of  it. 

\f  While  the  actors  never  thought  of  supplying  a  back- 
ground of  fixed  scenery,  they  took  pleasure  in  amusing 
the  spectators  with  portable  properties  of  many  kinds; 
and  here  again  they  were  in  accord  with  the  medieval 
tradition.  u'They  were  ready  enough  to  bring  upon  the 
stage  any  piece  of  furniture  which  might  arouse  the  atten- 
tion of  the  spectators;  not  merely  chairs  and  thrones,  but 


3o  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

objects  of  a  far  more  complicated  construction.  In  the 
' Spanish  Tragedy'  they  made  use  of  an  arbor  with  the 
body  of  a  murdered  man  swinging  in  it.  In  the  '  Faithful 
Sheperdess'  they  put  a  well-head  over  the  trap-door,  so 
that  the  Sullen  Shepherd  could  let  Amaryllis  down  into 
the  well.  In  the  'Broken  Heart'  they  had  to  provide  a 
chair  "with  an  engine" — that  is  to  say,  a  chair  fitted 
with  springs  so  that  iron  clamps  might  suddenly  seize  the 
man  who  sat  in  it.  In  one  play  an  apple-tree  was  planted 
on  the  stage,  and  in  another  a  tent  was  pitched.  A  bed 
was  sometimes  thrust  forward  from  behind  the  hanging 
tapestries,  or  these  curtains  might  be  parted  to  disclose  a 
table  set  for  a  banquet  or  to  reveal  Friar  Bacon  seated 
in  his  cell  and  surrounded  by  his  magical  apparatus.  In 
a  list  of  the  properties  possessed  by  one  company  in  1598 
we  find  even  "  1  Mouth  of  Hell,"  than  which  there  could 
be  no  better  proof  of  the  intimate  relation  between  the 
Elizabethan  drama  and  the  drama  of  the  Middle  Ages  in 
which  Hell-Mouth — represented  by  the  yawning  jaws  of  a 
fiery  dragon — played  a  most  prominent  part. 

Inadequate  as  this  primitive  playhouse  may  seem  to 
us  to-day,  it  was  perfectly  satisfactory  to  the  main  body 
of  Elizabethan  playgoers.  It  was  better  than  what  they 
had  been  used  to  in  the  makeshift  performances  of  the 
inn  yards.  It  was  better  than  any  theater  in  any  other 
capital  of  Europe  open  to  spectators  who  could  pay  their 
way  in.  It  had  distinct  advantages  over  any  playhouse 
of  the  same  period  in  Madrid,  when  the  Spanish  stage  was 
even  more  prolific  than  the  English  and  when  it  was 
illumined  by  the  genius  of  Lope  de  Vega  and  Calderon. 
Not  only  were  there  more  theaters  in  London  than  in  any 
other  city,  but  these  theaters  were  held  to  be  better 
fitted   for   their    special    purpose    and    also    handsomer. 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  31 

This  is  the   testimony  of  English   travelers  abroad  and 
of  foreign  visitors  to  Great  Britain. 


y  It  was  for  this  theater,  with  its  bare  platform  cluttered 
along  its  sides  with  seated  spectators,  with  no  curtain  and 
no  scenery,  with  its  two  doors  and  its  gallery  above,  with 
its  pendent  tapestry  at  the  back,  that  Shakspere  com- 
posed his  plays.  He  knew  no  other;  and  to  the  condi- 
tions of  this  theater  all  his  histories,  all  his  tragedies  and 
all  his  comedies  were  adjusted.  Like  the  playwrights  of 
every  other  period,  he  made  his  profit  out  of  the  playhouse 
as  he  found  it,  never  protesting  against  its  limitations 
and  always  turning  to  advantage  its  possibilities.  He  ac- 
cepted without  hesitation  the  traditions  established  by 
his  immediate  predecessors;  he  walked  in  the  path  they 
had  trodden  for  him;  and  he  was  content  at  first  to  do 
what  they  had  done,  even  if  he  strove  also  to  do  it  better. 
He  never  sought  for  overt  originality  of  presentation, 
desiring  rather  to  give  the  spectators  who  were  in  the 
habit  of  attending  the  theater  the  kind  of  play  they  were 
in  the  habit  of  enjoying  there.  Whatever  these  playgoers 
relished,  that  Shakspere  was  ready  always  to  provide, 
even  if  he  ventured  in  time  to  give  them  also  and  in 
addition  what  they  could  not  so  easily  apprehend  and 
appreciate. 

The  popular  playwrights  whom  Shakspere  imitated  and 
emulated  did  not  take  the  Aristotelian  view  that  a  play 
ought  to  present  an  action  of  a  certain  magnitude  with 
an  obvious  unity  of  plot  and  with  a  beginning,  a  middle 
and  an  end.  With  the  exception  of  Marlowe  and  Kyd, 
the  earlier  Elizabethan  dramatists   rarely  sought  to  deal 


32  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

with  what  Stevenson  called  the  great  passionate  crises  of 
existence  "when  duty  and  inclination  come  nobly  to  the 
grapple,"  the  culminating  moments  of  an  irresistible 
struggle  between  irreconcilable  desires.  What  they  felt 
themselves  called  to  set  on  the  stage  was  the  whole  of 
their  hero's  career,  with  little  selection  or  suppression,  just 
as  the  whole  of  the  gospel  story  had  been  represented  in 
the  mystery.  Indeed,  these  early  Elizabethan  playwrights 
had  almost  the  same  purpose  as  the  devout  devisers  of  the 
first  passion-play — they  desired  to  show  in  dialogue  and 
in  action  an  interesting  story,  mainly  for  the  benefit  of 
spectators  who  could  not  read,  who  wanted  to  have  the 
entire  tale  told  to  them  just  as  it  happened,  and  who  had 
a  patience  as  immense  as  their  curiosity. 

As  the  mystery  had  been  loose  in  its  construction  or  at 
least  without  any  conscious  unity  of  theme,  so  the  pop- 
ular play  in  London,  when  Shakspere  came  up  from  Strat- 
ford, was  a  haphazard  sequence  of  casual  episodes,  some 
of  them  irrelevant  and  some  of  them  incongruous.  As 
the  mystery  had  amused  its  admirers  by  the  commingling 
of  comic  and  serious  scenes,  so  also  the  Elizabethan  play 
unhesitatingly  passed  from  high-pitched  pathos  to  broad 
and  hearty  fun.  As  the  mystery  had  been  set  off  with  all 
the  spectacular  effects  possible  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
dramatized  narrative  exhibited  on  the  Elizabethan  stage 
was  accompanied  by  all  the  spectacular  effects  possible  in 
the  Elizabethan  theater;  and  the  playwright  lost  no 
opportunity  to  gladden  the  eyes  of  the  men  and  boys  who 
stood  restless  in  the  yard  with  processions  and  battles, 
and  to  delight  their  ears  with  songs  and  trumpets,  bells 
and  cannon. 

As  the  characters  of  the  medieval  drama  met*  and 
talked  on  a  neutral  ground,  which  might  be  anywhere, 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  33 

going  to  and  from  the  stations  only  when  there  was 
advantage  in  suggesting  a  special  place,  so  the  characters 
in  the  Elizabethan  drama  played  their  parts  on  a  neutral 
ground,  the  bare  stage  itself,  utilizing  the  space  behind 
the  arras  or  the  gallery  above  only  when  these  remoter 
places  were  necessary  to  the  conduct  of  the  story.  Nei- 
ther author  nor  spectator  made  any  effort  to  localize 
the  spot  where  two  important  characters  came  together 
to  discuss  their  private  plans,  unless  the  circumstances  of 
the  plot  required  that  this  spot  should  be  proclaimed. 
When  the  special  place  had  to  be  indicated,  this  was 
done  in  the  dialogue  itself,  and  the  audience  was  quick  to 
take  the  hint.  When  no  such  necessity  existed,  the  char- 
acters did  not  indicate  it;  and  probably  it  was  not  indi- 
cated by  any  placard  or  by  any  scenic  device. 

The  scene  might  be  anywhere;  and  without  warning 
it  might  shift  to  somewhere  else.  When  it  was  necessary 
to  the  plot  that  the  spectators  should  be  notified  of  a 
change  of  place,  the  playwright  did  this  frankly.  In  Mid- 
dleton's  '  Changeling,'  for  example,  De  Flores  came  out 
during  an  intermission  and  hung  a  rapier  behind  one  of 
the  doors,  and  then  when  the  play  was  resumed  he  told 
Alonzo  that  the  steps  to  the  casemate  were  narrow  and 
that  they  had  best  take  off  their  swords.  So  they  hang 
up  their  weapons;  and  then,  as  the  stage-direction  de- 
clares, they  "Ex[eunt]  at  one  door  and  enter  at  the 
other,"  thus  indicating  to  the  spectators  that  the  stage 
was  now  supposed  to  be  the  casemate,  and  there  De 
Flores,  seizing  the  rapier  he  had  concealed,  kills  Alonzo 
with  it.  In  Greene's  'George-a-Greene,'  a  change  of  lo- 
cality was  apparently  indicated  by  an  even  simpler 
method — by  the  actors  taking  a  few  steps  together.  The 
Shoemaker  says,  "Come,  sir,  will  you  go  to  the  town's 


34  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

end  now,  sir ? ,:  and  Jenkin  answers,  "Ay,  sir,  come." 
It  is  evident  that  they  then  pace  the  stage,  for  Jenkin 
goes  on,  "Now  we  are  at  the  town's  end.  What  say  you 
now?"  But  specific  indications  of  locality  like  these 
were  infrequent.  They  were  rarely  felt  to  be  necessary 
or  even  useful.  The  spectators  were  ready  to  accept  the 
stage  as  a  neutral  ground,  where  anybody  might  meet 
anybody  else.  Author  and  audience  alike  were  inter- 
ested in  what  the  characters  did  and  said  and  were,  and 
not  at  all  in  where  they  were  supposed  to  be. 

To  Sidney  this  was  shocking,  for  he  was  familiar  with 
the  dramas  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  wherein  there  is 
little  or  no  change  of  scene.  "Now  you  shall  have  three 
ladies  walk  in  to  gather  flowers,  and  then  we  must  believe 
the  stage  to  be  a  garden,"  Sidney  complained.  "By 
and  by  we  hear  news  of  a  shipwreck  in  the  same  place, 
then  we  are  to  blame  if  we  accept  it  not  for  a  rock.  Upon 
the  back  of  that,  out  comes  a  hideous  monster  with  fire 
and  smoke,  and  then  the  miserable  beholders  are  bound 
to  take  it  for  a  cave."  But  the  beholders  were  not  mis- 
erable; so  long  as  they  beheld  the  hero  saved  from  the 
wreck  and  victorious  in  his  combat  with  the  dragon,  they 
were  perfectly  happy.  And  so  long  as  he  could  thus 
make  them  happy,  the  playwright  did  not  think  of  mod- 
ifying his  methods,  unsatisfactory  as  they  might  be  to 
Sidney,  and  strange  as  they  may  seem  to  us. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  the  large  freedom  the 
Elizabethan  playwright  possessed.  His  practice  is  wholly 
opposed  to  that  of  the  modern  dramatist,  who  has  to 
adjust  his  pieces  to  the  conditions  of  the  picture-frame 
stage  of  to-day,  very  different  from  those  of  the  platform- 
stage  of  Shakspere.  The  dramatist  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury thinks  in  terms  of  the  theater  of  the  twentieth  cen- 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  35 

tury;  he  conceives  his  play  as  a  single  compact  action, 
with  a  beginning,  a  middle  and  an  end;  he  composes  it  in 
a  series  of  acts,  each  of  which  contains  an  essential  portion 
of  the  plot  and  each  of  which  is  laid  in  its  appropriate 
place,  made  visible  by  appropriate  scenery  and  furniture. 
He  is  under  pressure  to  make  the  action  of  his  story  clear, 
logical  and  progressive,  and  to  exclude  from  it  all  that 
does  not  insist  upon  admission.  But  Shakspere  felt  no 
compulsion  of  this  sort.  He  might  intertwine  as  many 
separate  stories  as  he  chose;  and  he  had  no  need  to  think 
where  his  successive  episodes  were  supposed  to  take 
place,  since  he  could  not  foresee  the  modern  expectancy 
of  scenery.  He  might  call  the  place  where  he  laid  his 
story  Ephesus  or  Athens,  Bohemia  or  Illyria;  none  the 
less  did  he  lay  it  not  in  any  of  these  fabled  places  but 
frankly  on  the  stage  of  his  theater,  rarely  giving  a 
thought  to  the  indication  of  the  locality  where  any  one 
episode  happened. 

A  careful  reading  of  Shakspere's  own  text  with  his  own 
stage-directions  will  reveal  that  this  was  always  his 
practice.  In  the  first  act  of  'Othello,'  Brabantio  enters 
"above,"  that  is  to  say,  he  appears  on  the  gallery  over 
the  back  of  the  platform;  and  the  modern  editions  identify 
this  as  then  representing  a  window  of  Brabantio's  house, 
but  to  Shakspere  it  was  simply  a  useful  element  of  his 
own  stage.  In  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew,'  when  Sly  is 
to  be  regaled  with  a  play,  the  stage-direction  is  simply, 
"Enter  the  drunkard  above,"  thus  leaving  the  stage  bare 
for  the  piece  to  be  performed  for  his  benefit.  In  the 
second  act  of  the  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream,'  although 
the  scene  may  be  supposed  to  be  out  in  the  wood,  the 
stage-direction  reads,  "Enter  Oberon  at  one  door  and 
Titania    at    another."     Even    more    significant   is    Shak- 


36  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

spere's  utilization  of  the  tapestry  which  hung  from  the 
edge  of  the  gallery  over  the  back  of  the  stage.  Hamlet 
thrusts  through  the  arras  and  kills  Polonius;  and  here  it 
may  be  urged  that  tapestry  is  a  fit  adornment  for  the 
castle  of  Elsinore.  But  in  the  '  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor, ' 
Falstaff,  when  he  is  alarmed  at  the  impending  arrival  of 
Ford,  proposes  to  hide  behind  the  arras.  Ford  was  well- 
to-do  and  it  is  possible  that  his  house  was  decked  with 
expensive  tapestry;  but  even  if  there  had  been  arras  in 
Ford's  house  it  would  not  have  profited  the  fat  knight, 
since  his  protruding  bulk  would  instantly  have  disclosed 
his  presence  behind  the  hangings — plain  proof  that  Shak- 
spere  was  thinking  in  terms  of  his  own  theater  and  not 
in  terms  of  the  place  where  his  action  was  supposed  to 
be. 

It  may  be  noted  also  that  Shakspere  made  use  of  the 
medieval  device  of  the  stations,  which  brought  together 
before  the  eyes  of  the  spectators  places  actually  far  apart; 
in  ' Richard  III'  the  tents  of  the  rival  leaders,  Richard 
and  Richmond,  are  pitched  on  opposite  sides  of  the  stage. 
And  the  same  convention,  convenient  if  medieval,  is 
utilized  in  other  plays;  to  us  it  may  seem  out  of  nature, 
accustomed  as  we  are  to  other  conventions,  but  it  was 
perfectly  acceptable  to  Elizabethan  playgoers,  who  were 
used  to  it  and  who  were  eager  to  hear  the  brag  and 
bluff  of  the  contending  chiefs.  Sometimes  Shakspere 
wishes  his  audience  to  visualize  a  special  spot  and  then 
he  describes  it  picturesquely  and  forcibly,  Dover  cliff,  for 
example,  in  'King  Lear'  and  Dunsinane  Castle  in 'Mac- 
beth.' In  the  drama  of  the  twentieth  century  description 
is  out  of  place,  since  it  is  the  duty  of  the  scene-painter  to 
supply  the  needed  suggestion  to  the  imagination;  but  in 
the  drama  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  poet  had  to  be  his 


SHAKSPERE'S  THEATER  37 

own  scene-painter.  It  is  to  the  absence  of  scenery  in  the 
Elizabethan  theater  that  we  must  ascribe  the  superb 
descriptions  which  delight  us  in  Shakspere's  plays.  And 
it  is  an  impossible  task  which  is  set  the  scene-painter 
now  when  he  is  called  upon  to  rival  the  magic  of  Shak- 
spere's style. 

As  there  was  no  effort  to  provide  the  stage  with  appro- 
priate scenery,  so  there  was  no  attempt  to  dress  the  actors 
in  costumes  appropriate  to  the  time  and  place  of  the  play 
they  were  representing.  The  performers  wore  the  most 
gorgeous  clothes  they  could  procure,  regardless  of  the 
flagrant  impropriety  of  attiring  Hamlet  and  Macbeth  and 
Julius  Caesar  in  the  sumptuous  apparel  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth's court.  In  fact,  the  splendor  of  the  men's  clothes 
seems  to  have  been  almost  as  attractive  in  the  sixteenth- 
century  theaters  of  London  as  the  richness  of  the  women's 
clothes  in  the  twentieth-century  theaters  of  Paris. 


CHAPTER  III 

SHAKSPERE  AS  REVISER  AND  AS  IMITATOR 

I 

The  mystery  as  it  was  evolved  in  the  church  has  been 
aptly  described  as  a  "living  picture-book,"  since  "the 
people,  ignorant  of  Latin,  were  to  perceive  by  sight  what 
was  inaccessible  to  the  ear."  Therefore  everything  was 
shown  in  action,  and  there  was  as  little  narration  as  might 
be,  because  the  words  themselves  were  not  understood 
by  the  spectators.  The  plays  acted  on  the  public  stage 
under  the  Tudors  retained  the  characteristics  of  the  living 
picture-book,  even  though  the  language  was  no  longer 
unintelligible.  Most  of  the  crude  pieces  which  bridge 
the  gap  from  the  mystery  to  the  chronicle-play  are  now 
lost;  and  yet  it  is  not  impossible  to  outline  the  dramatic 
development. 

The  mystery  was  an  arrangement  in  dialogue  and 
action  of  the  gospel  story  with  selected  episodes  from  the 
Old  Testament  prefixed.  The  miracle  was  a  similar 
presentation  of  the  career  of  a  saint  or  of  the  life  of  a  lay- 
man whom  the  saint  succored  in  the  hour  of  need;  and 
the  method  of  performance  was  the  same.  This  method 
was  applied  after  a  while  to  the  lives  of  national  heroes 
and  later  to  leading  characters  in  popular  fiction;  it  was 
still  the  method  of  the  living  picture-book;  and  certain 
kinds  of  pictures  proved  to  have  the  power  of  pleasing 
audiences.  The  chronicle-play,  the  dramatization  of  his- 
tory, presented  the  salient  figures  in  the  annals  of  England; 

38 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  39 

and,  like  the  mystery,  it  relieved  its  serious  episodes  with 
scenes  of  drollery,  often  having  very  little  relation  to  the 
main  theme  of  the  play.  Specimens  of  the  pieces  written 
by  Shakspere's  immediate  predecessors  have  been  pre- 
served; and  we  can  see  for  ourselves  the  kind  of  living 
picture-book  which  was  interesting  to  the  playgoers  of 
London  when  Shakspere  came  up  to  the  capital  to  earn 
his  living  as  best  he  could.  These  immediate  predecessors 
were  his  competitors;  and  in  his  friendly  rivalry  with  them 
he  availed  himself  of  the  devices  they  had  found  profitable. 
He  began,  as  indeed  he  had  to  begin,  by  imitating  those 
whom  he  wished  to  emulate  and  whom  he  was  soon  to 
surpass.  He  started  as  a  playwright  by  trying  to  do 
what  they  had  already  done  and  to  give  his  audience  the 
kind  of  pleasure  to  which  it  was  accustomed.  His  be- 
ginnings were  more  than  modest;  they  were  as  unpre- 
tending as  possible.  Neither  he  himself  nor  the  associ- 
ated actors  who  first  permitted  him  to  refashion  for  their 
use  plays  of  an  assured  popularity  which  needed  revision, 
could  foresee  or  even  suspect  the  marvelous  genius  he 
was  soon  to  display.  And  in  these  earlier  specimens  of 
humble  hack-work  as  the  stock  playwright  of  the  company, 
it  is  absurd  for  us  to  expect  to  find  the  mighty  gifts  which 
were  to  be  revealed  in  his  maturity.  His  moving  poetry, 
at  one  time  instinct  with  lyric  grace  and  at  another  rich 
with  dramatic  fervor,  his  power  of  projecting  character 
and  of  piercing  the  soul  of  man  at  the  moment  of  ulti- 
mate crisis,  his  wisdom,  that  is  to  say,  his  deep  under- 
standing of  human  conduct,  and  his  final  skill  as  a  play- 
wright, his  power  of  so  building  up  a  story  on  the  stage 
that  we  cannot  choose  but  hear — these  are  the  qualities 
which  it  would  be  idle  to  seek  in  the  prentice  tasks  of  his 
inexperienced  youth. 


4o  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Not  only  are  these  qualities  of  his  riper  mastery  lack- 
ing in  the  earliest  pieces  to  which  his  name  is  attached, 
but  we  fail  to  find  in  these  plays  any  effort  for  origi- 
nality, any  striving  for  individuality,  or  any  desire  for  self- 
expression.  Probably  at  that  period  of  his  career  he  was 
not  yet  conscious  of  anything  within  him  which  demanded 
utterance;  and  at  no  time  in  his  life  did  he  ever  search 
for  originality.  He  was  content  to  take  the  drama  as  he 
found  it,  even  though  he  might  be  moved  after  a  while 
to  better  its  form  and  to  fill  that  form  with  a  meaning 
which  it  had  never  known  before.  He  was  willing  at 
first  to  tread  the  trail  his  predecessors  had  blazed,  even 
though  he  was  to  be  encouraged  later  to  push  on  to  ex- 
plorations of  his  own. 

Every  great  artist,  whatever  his  art,  always  begins  by 
modest  imitation  of  the  men  whom  he  finds  at  work,  and 
from  whom  he  has  to  acquire  the  traditions  and  the  tricks 
of  the  trade,  the  technic  of  the  calling;  he  starts  where 
they  had  left  off;  and  his  earliest  works,  far  from  being 
masterpieces,  are  scarcely  distinguishable  from  those  of 
his  elder  rivals.  He  borrows  their  processes  and  as- 
similates their  methods;  and  it  is  only  by  so  doing  that 
he  is  enabled  to  master  the  craft.  Not  until  he  has  put 
himself  abreast  of  the  state  of  the  art  is  he  ready  to  go 
forward.  The  originality  of  every  great  artist  is  like  the 
melancholy  of  Jaques — compounded  of  many  simples. 
And  the  great  artist  is  also  strangely  susceptible  to  later 
influences;  even  in  the  full  flower  of  his  expansion  he  is 
swift  to  feel  the  pressure  of  changing  taste  or  the  stimu- 
lus of  a  rival's  success.  Shakspere  himself  was  led  by 
the  public  liking  for  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  to  compose 
dramatic-romances  akin  to  theirs;  and  this  was  very  late 
in  his  career,  after  he  had  asserted  his  own  individuality 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  41 

in  his  major  masterpieces.  There  is  no  need  for  surprise 
that  in  his  impressionable  youth  he  echoed  Marlowe's 
mighty  line  and  followed  in  the  bloody  footstep  of  Kyd. 

II 

The  exact  sequence  in  which  Shakspere  originally 
brought  out  the  plays  collected  in  the  First  Folio  cannot 
be  declared  with  authority,  in  default  of  the  precise  date 
when  each  of  them  was  first  acted.  Ingenious  methods  of 
investigation  and  tireless  industry  in  research  have  made 
it  possible  to  indicate  approximately  the  year  when  each 
of  them  was  probably  produced  on  the  stage.  There  is 
substantial  agreement  among  the  scholars  who  have  in- 
vestigated these  problems  that  'Titus  Andronicus'  and  the 
three  parts  of '  Henry  VI '  were  put  into  Shakspere's  hands 
for  revision  very  early  in  his  career  as  a  playwright  and 
probably  before  he  had  ventured  upon  original  author- 
ship. These  plays  stand  in  a  peculiar  position  to  the  rest 
of  his  works.  Not  only  are  the  dates  of  their  produc- 
tion uncertain,  but  so  also  is  Shakspere's  own  relation 
to  them.  We  do  not  know  just  what  share  he  had  in 
these  plays  as  we  find  them  in  the  First  Folio.  They  dis- 
close undoubted  traces  of  his  handiwork,  even  if  these  in- 
dications are  not  many.  On  the  other  hand,  these  plays 
are  plainly  not  wholly  Shakspere's.  They  are  not  his 
general  imitation  of  a  predecessor's  work;  they  are  rather 
his  revision  of  specific  plays  by  one  or  more  of  these  pre- 
decessors. Such  interest  as  they  have  is  due  almost  solely 
to  the  fact  that  they  contain  more  or  less  of  Shakspere's 
writing;  but  they  are  nowhere  stamped  with  his  trade- 
mark. As  they  reveal  very  few  of  his  significant  char- 
acteristics, they  add  little  or  nothing  to  his  fame. 


42  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

The  three  parts  of  ' Henry  VI*  have  been  called  "a 
historical  novel  of  the  best  type  with  the  joy  of  verse 
added."  And  this  may  be  admitted,  as  the  utmost  that 
can  be  said  for  the  triplicate  piece,  only  if  we  have  in 
our  minds  no  standard  of  unity  for  the  historical  novel. 
'Henry  VI'  is  a  panorama  rather  than  a  play.  It  is  only 
a  sequence  of  straggling  scenes,  with  no  architecture  of 
plot,  with  no  dominating  figure  to  focus  our  interest,  with 
little  intensity  of  will  in  the  characters — a  chance  medley 
of  independent  episodes  with  no  controlling  purpose. 
Now  and  again  the  characters  start  to  life  and  move  us 
for  a  moment;  that  is  to  say,  this  scene  or  that  may  have 
a  truly  dramatic  interest  due  to  the  clash  of  contending 
desires;  but  no  one  of  the  three  parts  is  really  dramatic 
as  a  whole.  No  one  of  them  is  knit  together;  and  no  one 
of  them  is  more  than  a  tangle  of  intrigues  and  quarrels, 
of  murders  and  skirmishes.  Each  of  the  three  conjoined 
plays  is  artless,  or  at  least  it  belongs  to  a  very  primitive 
period  of  the  art  of  the  stage,  having  scarcely  a  hint  of 
the  constructive  skill  that  Shakspere  was  soon  to  display 
in  the  'Comedy  of  Errors.' 

In  'Henry  VI'  we  discover  (as  may  be  discovered 
in  the  later  chronicle-plays  of  Shakspere's  own  composi- 
tion) the  antique  convention  that  the  general  is  an 
actual  combatant  in  the  field  and  that  the  victory  is 
due  to  his  personal  prowess  and  not  to  his  tactics  or  his 
strategy.  This  convention  lingered  in  English  poetry 
as  late  as  Addison's  'Campaign';  and  it  was  probably  a 
Homeric  inheritance,  the  survival  of  what  may  have  been 
the  fact  in  the  days  of  Achilles  and  Hector.  In  the  Third 
Part  of  'Henry  VI'  the  rival  leaders  boastfully  insult  one 
another  before  battle,  quite  in  the  Homeric  fashion.  In 
the  First  Part  the  noble  figure  of  Joan  of  Arc  is  ignobly 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  43 

debased  with  needless  indecency,  the  popular  playwrights 
in  London  being  then  swift  to  blacken  the  enemies  of 
England  and  to  represent  them  as  liars  and  cowards — 
just  as  some  of  the  Attic  dramatists  had  been  unfair  to 
the  rivals  of  Athens.  And  Jack  Cade  may  have  been 
ignorant  and  foolish;  but  he  could  not  have  been  quite 
the  robust  caricature  that  appears  in  the  Second  Part; 
he  is  here  as  false  to  fact  as  the  popular  agitator  misrep- 
resented by  Sardou  in  'Rabagas'  nearly  three  centuries 
later. 

Crude  and  rambling  as  are  the  three  parts  of  '  Henry 
VI,'  they  are  not  below  the  average  of  the  chronicle-plays 
then  popular  in  the  playhouses  of  London,  however  in- 
ferior they  may  be  to  the  later  histories  which  Shakspere 
was  to  write.  And  like  many  of  these  more  primitive 
pieces,  the  three  parts  of  'Henry  VI'  are  not  without  sep- 
arate scenes  handled  with  genuine  dramatic  power  and 
not  without  occasional  characters  boldly  projected.  It 
is  in  these  casual  episodes  and  in  these  firmly  drawn  per- 
sonages that  we  like  to  discover  the  improving  touch  of 
Shakspere's  hand.  King  Henry  himself  is  amply  con- 
ceived and  vigorously  presented.  Gloucester  is  the  pow- 
erfully outlined  figure  of  the  future  Richard  III.  Jack 
Cade,  exaggerated  as  he  may  be,  is  instinct  with  life;  and 
the  scenes  in  which  he  appears  have  a  richness  of  color 
suggesting  the  amplitude  of  humor  that  Shakspere  was 
later  to  display. 

The  language  throughout  is  high-pitched  and  sonorous, 
sometimes  with  the  exuberance  of  bombastic  rhetoric  and 
sometimes  with  a  lofty  dignity,  which  suggests  the  pen 
of  Marlowe,  if  not  that  of  Shakspere  himself.  There  is 
infrequent  rime;  and  the  most  of  the  speeches  are  in 
flexible  and  resonant  blank  verse.     In  the  effective  and 


44  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

significant  scene  in  the  First  Part  when  the  partizans  of 
York  and  Lancaster  declare  their  affiliations  by  plucking 
either  a  red  rose  or  a  white,  there  is  a  dexterity  in  the 
dialogue,  a  felicity  in  playing  with  words,  a  delight  in 
verbal  adroitness,  which  is  rather  in  Shakspere's  manner 
than  in  Marlowe's,  and  which  has  been  taken  as  evidence 
that  at  least  the  phrasing  of  the  successive  speeches  is 
Shakspere's,  even  if  the  invention  of  the  scene  may  have 
been  the  work  of  the  earlier  devisers  of  the  original  piece. 
But  we  recognize  the  handiwork  of  Shakspere  in  these 
scenes  rather  because  we  are  deliberately  looking  for  it 
than  because  it  is  patent.  Probably  there  is  little  danger 
in  suggesting  that  if  'Henry  VI'  had  not  been  included 
in  the  folio  of  1623,  few  competent  critics  would  have 
ascribed  to  Shakspere  any  considerable  share  in  its  com- 
position. 

Ill 

The  three  parts  of  'Henry  VI'  are  specimens  of  the 
type  known  to  us  to-day  as  the  chronicle-play.  'Titus 
Andronicus'  is  a  specimen  of  another  type,  which  is  now 
called  the  tragedy-of-blood  or  revenge-play.  Just  as  we 
classify  the  pieces  we  see  in  our  modern  theaters  into 
society-comedies  and  problem-plays,  so  can  we  also  differ- 
entiate the  pieces  performed  in  the  Tudor  playhouses. 
The  chronicle-play  had  been  raised  to  the  level  of  litera- 
ture by  Marlowe;  the  comedy-of-humors  was  created  later 
by  Ben  Jonson;  and  the  dramatic-romance  was  developed 
by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  Perhaps  the  most  character- 
istically Elizabethan  of  them  all  was  the  tragedy-of-blood, 
which  Kyd  made  his  own.  It  was  an  outgrowth  of  the 
chronicle-play,  cross-fertilized  by  Senecan  tragedy.  It 
may  also  be  regarded  as  the  bridge  between  the  formless 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  45 

chronicle-play  and  the  well-built  tragedy  of  Shakspere's 
maturity. 

While  the  plain  people  had  delighted  in  the  chronicle- 
play,  scholars  familiar  with  the  classics  recoiled  from  its 
laxity  of  structure  and  from  its  commingling  of  the  comic 
and  the  tragic.  They  were  shocked  also  by  its  violation 
of  the  alleged  rules  of  dramatic  propriety  as  these  had 
been  elaborated  by  the  Italian  critics.  They  followed 
these  Italians  in  accepting  Seneca  as  the  model  of  dra- 
matic excellence  rather  than  Sophocles  or  even  Eurip- 
ides. They  were  unaware  of  the  fact  that  the  Hispano- 
Roman  rhetorician  had  composed  his  poems  in  dialogue 
for  recitation  only,  and  not  for  actual  performance.  They 
relished  the  affluence  of  his  oratorical  passages  and  the 
sententious  maxims  with  which  these  speeches  were 
adorned;  and  they  did  not  recoil  from  the  frigid  accu- 
mulation of  horrors  which  characterizes  the  plays  attrib- 
uted to  Nero's  tutor. 

As  the  scholar-poets  of  Italy  first,  and  later  those  of 
France,  had  composed  stately  tragedies  on  the  Senecan 
model,  so  in  time  did  the  scholar-poets  of  England.  One 
of  these  imitations  of  the  eloquent  Roman  was  'Gorboduc/ 
a  tragedy  in  five  acts,  written  by  two  courtiers.  Although 
it  seems  to  have  been  actually  presented  by  amateurs 
before  the  queen — a  severe  test  of  the  royal  fortitude — it 
is  essentially  a  closet-drama,  since  the  action  takes  place 
off  the  stage  and  is  only  discussed  by  the  characters.  If 
the  complex  story  of  entangled  assassinations  had  been 
shown  in  action  the  plot  might  have  been  interesting;  but 
the  bloody  deeds  were  merely  narrated  by  messengers,  so 
that  the  needless  chorus  could  comment  sagely  upon 
the  vicissitudes.  Because  it  was  devoid  of  theatrical 
effectiveness,  it  never  appeared  on  the  public  stage;  and 


46  SHAKSPERE  AS  A   PLAYWRIGHT 

because  it  did  not  possess  the  unities  of  time  and  place, 
it  did  not  satisfy  a  scholar  like  Sidney,  though  he  praised 
its  "stately  speeches  and  well-sounding  phrases,  climbing 
to  the  height  of  Seneca's  style." 

Unfitted  as  'Gorboduc'  was  to  attract  the  playgoing 
public,  its  authors  dowered  the  English  drama  with  blank 
verse,  a  noble  instrument  for  dialogue.  Blank  verse  had 
been  devised  by  Surrey  for  his  translation  of  the  'yEneid,' 
and  it  was  soon  adopted  by  Marlowe  for  his  superb  ha- 
rangues. While  the  earlier  composers  of  chronicle-plays 
were  apparently  men  of  little  education,  the  later  drama- 
tists were  often  graduates  of  the  universities.  Marlowe 
and  Kyd  knew  Seneca  at  first  hand;  and  even  without 
4 Gorboduc'  they  might  well  have  been  tempted  to  import 
into  the  English  drama  what  they  had  admired  in  the 
Latin.  Underneath  the  stiff  rhetoric  of  the  Roman's 
oratorical  speeches  was  the  adroit  framework  of  an 
Athenian  dramatist;  and  the  Latin  tragedies  were  theat- 
rically effective  even  though  their  author  had  not  intended 
them  for  any  actual  theater.  There  was  in  them  not  only 
shapeliness  of  plot  but  also  unity  of  tone,  qualities  then 
wholly  lacking  in  the  rude  pieces  of  the  unlettered  English 
playwrights.  Even  the  cold  cruelties,  not  surprising  in 
dramas  written  in  the  reign  of  Nero,  were  not  unpleasing 
to  the  Elizabethans,  who  were  used  to  bear-baiting  and 
bull-baiting,  and  who  were  accustomed  to  summary  exe- 
cutions and  to  the  display  of  traitors'  heads  on  the  gates 
of  the  Tower.  Our  more  delicate  nerves  lead  us  to  shrink 
from  torture  and  bodily  mutilation,  and  even  from  vio- 
lent death;  but  the  Elizabethans  were  stouter  of  stomach 
and  they  were  closer  to  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  French 
miracle-plays  had  often  represented  the  martyrdom  of  a 
saint  with  all  its  revolting  details.     Even  in  the  Renas- 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  47 

cence,  and  especially  in  the  works  of  the  Bolognese  paint- 
ers, we  can  discover  a  relish  for  the  exhibition  of  physical 
suffering.  Seneca's  liking  for  bloodshed  anticipates  the 
sanguinary  joy  of  his  fellow-Spaniard,  Ribera,  just  as  the 
hard  cruelty  of  his  pupil  Nero  anticipates  the  determined 
ferocity  of  Torquemada.  And  perhaps  we  flatter  our- 
selves nowadays,  for  although  we  like  to  think  that  this 
debased  taste  has  been  bred  out  of  us,  we  can  often  find 
the  same  pandering  to  blood-lust  in  our  yellow  journalism. 

The  most  successful  tragedy-of-blood  is  Kyd's  'Spanish 
Tragedy,'  a  tale  of  ensanguined  revenge,  full  of  dark  in- 
trigue and  of  protracted  reprisal.  It  is  stark  melodrama, 
reeking  with  horrors  and  never  attaining  to  the  terror  of 
true  tragedy.  But  it  has  an  ingenious  and  interesting 
plot,  which  gives  it  a  unity  of  theme  and  a  dramatic  vigor 
until  then  unknown  in  the  English  theater.  The  demand 
for  vengeance  stiffens  the  action,  supplies  a  central  motive 
force,  and  arouses  the  interest  of  expectancy.  In  a  word, 
this  dominating  desire  to  insist  on  an  eye  for  an  eye  and 
a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  makes  the  living  picture-book  into  a 
true  play-book.  The  atrocities  which  were  coldly  nar- 
rated in  'Gorboduc'  are  shown  on  the  stage  in  the  '  Spanish 
Tragedy,'  which  tries  to  rack  the  nerves  of  the  spectators 
rather  than  to  purge  their  souls;  it  is  little  more  than 
yellow  journalism  dramatized;  but  it  has  that  stiff  asser- 
tion of  the  human  will  which  is  the  very  essence  of  the 
drama  and  which  had  been  lacking  in  most  of  the  chron- 
icle-plays. 

This  bold  tale  of  delayed  vengeance,  with  its  villain 
double-dyed,  with  its  sheeted  ghosts  and  with  its  play- 
within-the-play,  marked  an  important  epoch  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  medieval  chronicle-play  into  the  purer 
tragedy   of  Shakspere;   and   even   in   the   loftiest  of  his 


48  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

tragedies,  in  'Hamlet,'  in  ' Macbeth'  and  in  'Lear,'  we 
can  perceive  traces  of  the  abiding  influence  of  the  inferior 
tragedy-of-blood.  The  ' Spanish  Tragedy'  itself,  filled 
though  it  was  with  rant  and  with  violence,  deserved  its 
abiding  popularity,  for  it  was  richer  in  theatrical  effect 
than  any  play  earlier  represented  before  English  play- 
goers— with  the  possible  exception  of  Marlowe's  'Tam- 
burlaine.'  Its  success  encouraged  the  later  playwrights 
to  eschew  the  normal  and  to  seek  out  the  abnormal,  as 
likely  to  be  more  startling  to  the  standing  spectators  in 
the  yard.  Even  Shakspere  did  not  hesitate  to  set  on 
the  stage  strange  events,  marvelous  coincidences,  and  un- 
precedented crimes,  assured  in  advance  that  he  could  thus 
please  the  predilections  of  the  playgoing  public. 


IV 

'Titus  Andronicus'  is  a  tragedy-of-blood  second  in  pop- 
ularity only  to  the  'Spanish  Tragedy.'  Judged  by  the 
standard  of  the  time,  this  popularity  was  well  deserved. 
Revolting  as  the  several  episodes  may  be  to  us,  the  play 
gave  the  Elizabethans  the  kind  of  pleasure  they  expected 
in  the  theater.  It  has  a  complicated  plot,  easy  to  follow 
in  action  and  gathering  force  as  it  moves  onward.  Its  suc- 
cessive scenes  may  seem  to  us  crude  in  art  and  brutal  in 
tone,  yet  its  very  violence  is  but  the  excess  of  its  essential 
force.  Seen  on  the  stage,  it  could  not  fail  to  arouse  and  to 
hold  the  interest  of  a  contemporary  audience.  Its  action 
advances  swiftly;  its  characters  are  boldly  outlined;  its 
dialogue  is  stiff  with  top-lofty  rhetoric.  It  maybe  only 
a  medley  of  invective  and  assassination,  of  bombast  and 
brutality;  but  it  is  adroitly  devised  to  capture  the  favor 
of  the  groundlings.     It  has  a  struggle  of  contending  de- 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  49 

sires  to  sustain  its  structure.  Even  if  it  does  accumulate 
horror  on  horror's  head,  this  did  not  displease  the  full- 
blooded  and  coarse-grained  playgoers  for  whom  it  had 
been  compounded. 

The  gross  callousness  of  'Titus  Andronicus,'  its  sum- 
mary psychology,  and  the  absence  of  all  those  finer  quali- 
ties which  are  evident  in  Shakspere's  later  tragedies,  have 
led  many  to  deny  that  he  could  be  in  any  way  responsible 
for  a  turgid  melodrama  so  repugnant  and  revolting. 
But  it  was  published  in  quarto  in  1594;  it  was  credited  to 
him  by  Meres  in  1598;  and  it  was  included  in  the  folio  of 
1623.  He  may  not  be  its  author  in  any  exact  sense,  but 
he  was  its  reviser — as  he  was  the  reviser  of  the  three  parts 
of  f  Henry  VI. '  In  the  invaluable  diary  of  Philip  Hens- 
lowe,  a  broker  in  theatrical  wares  and  a  backer  of  the- 
atrical enterprises,  we  find  mention  of  'tittus  and  Ves- 
pacia'  and  of  'titus  and  Ondronicus.'  It  may  be  that 
these  entries  refer  only  to  one  piece;  and  it  may  be  that 
they  indicate  the  existence  of  two  pieces  on  the  same  sub- 
ject. If  there  were  two  plays,  then  one  of  them  may  sur- 
vive in  a  German  version,  which  has  been  exhumed,  and 
the  other  may  survive  in  a  Dutch  version,  which  is  also 
extant. 

The  English  originals  of  both  the  German  and  the 
Dutch  pieces  are  now  lost;  a  comparison  of  the  two  ver- 
sions in  foreign  languages  shows  that  they  differ  in  many 
details  and  that  the  play  attributed  to  Shakspere  con- 
tains incidents  which  exist  only  in  one  or  the  other  of 
these  versions.  The  inference  is  plain  that  the  play  as 
we  have  it  is  the  result  of  a  combination  of  the  two  Eng- 
lish originals  of  these  foreign  versions;  and  this  inference 
is  fortified  by  the  probability  that  one  of  the  lost  pieces 
belonged  to  the  Earl  of  Leicester's  players,  of  which  organ- 


5o  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

ization  Shakspere  was  a  member,  and  the  other  to  the 
Earl  of  Pembroke's  players — two  companies  closely  asso- 
ciated in  1594.  There  is,  therefore,  some  warrant  for 
believing  that  Shakspere  took  one  of  these  plays  and  im- 
proved it  by  incorporating  episodes  and  effects  from  the 
other  play.  This  was  only  a  casual  task-work  and  it  did 
not  tax  his  invention.  It  was  akin  to  the  revision  of  a 
cyclopedia  article  for  a  new  issue,  which  another  writer 
merely  brings  down  to  date.  And  there  is  no  reason  to 
assume  that  Shakspere  felt  called  upon  to  do  more  than 
this,  although  it  is  possible  that  he  may  have  touched  up 
the  dialogue  here  and  there  and  heightened  now  and 
again  the  impressiveness  of  a  scene. 

Even  if  Shakspere  had  been  shocked  by  the  crudity 
and  the  cruelty  of  the  old  plays  he  was  strengthening  and 
even  if  he  had  felt  disgust  at  the  harsh  brutality  of 
their  horrors,  he  would  not  have  been  at  liberty  to  mod- 
ify them  to  any  great  extent.  He  was  working  for  the 
actors  themselves;  and  these  performers  were  not  likely 
to  allow  any  of  the  old  effects  to  be  shorn  from  their 
parts — effects  of  which  the  value  had  been  tested  and 
proved  year  after  year.  His  position  was  not  unlike  that 
of  a  playwright  to-day,  who  might  be  called  upon  to  pre- 
pare a  new  version  of  *  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,'  and  who  would 
never  dream  of  leaving  out  the  flogging  of  the  sable  hero, 
however  much  that  scene  might  be  distasteful  to  himself. 
There  is,  however,  no  basis  for  the  supposition  that  Shak- 
spere himself  was  disgusted  by  the  offensive  episodes  of 
'Titus  Andronicus.'  They  were  not  more  objectionable 
than  the  kindred  atrocities  in  other  tragedies-of-blood, 
which  were  long  familiar  to  him  and  in  which  he  must 
have  been  acting  at  the  time. 

It  is  well  for  us  always  to  keep  in  mind  that  Shakspere 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  51 

himself  was  an  Elizabethan,  with  the  stout  nerves  and 
the  insensibility  to  pain  which  seem  to  be  characteristic 
of  those  spacious  days.  He  could  not  help  being  his  own 
contemporary.  The  story  of  'Titus  Andronicus**  may  ap- 
pear to  us  repellent  beyond  measure,  and  we  may  like  to 
think  that  Shakspere  was  working  against  the  grain  when 
he  undertook  to  revise  it;  but  this  is  only  an  unlikely 
surmise.  On  the  other  hand,  we  may  note  that  even  if 
he  were  not  repelled  by  the  hideous  coarseness  of  the 
story,  he  was  not  really  attracted  to  it,  since  he  seems  to 
have  added  little  or  nothing  not  ready  to  his  hand  in  one 
or  another  of  the  plays  which  had  achieved  an  earlier 
popularity.  He  was  not  inspired  by  the  ghastly  plot  to 
make  it  his  own  and  to  elevate  it  by  the  fire  of  his  imagina- 
tion. It  did  not  even  tempt  him  to  exercise  his  invention. 
His  contribution  to  the  play  as  it  appears  in  the  folio  is 
certainly  not  to  the  construction  and  probably  only  a 
little  to  the  characterization;  seemingly  it  was  confined 
to  the  rhetoric.  In  other  words,  he  did  the  job  confided 
to  him  in  workmanlike  fashion,  but  his  heart  was  not  in 
it.  And  perhaps  this  external  polishing  was  all  that  he 
was  permitted  by  his  employers,  who  had  no  reason  to 
foresee  the  dramaturgic  dexterity  he  was  soon  to  exhibit 
in  plays  wherein  his  interest  was  more  obviously  aroused. 


Here  it  may  be  well  to  discuss,  once  for  all,  Shakspere's 
undeniable  willingness  to  profit  by  the  labors  of  others. 
It  has  often  been  made  a  matter  of  reproach  to  him 
that  he  was  a  plagiarist,  remorselessly  stealing  sub- 
jects, situations  and  even  whole  plots.  And  when  the 
charge  is  insisted  upon  there  seems   to  be  no  defense — 


52  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

except  to  analyze  a  little  more  closely  the  exact  meaning 
which  ought  to  attach  to  plagiarism.  It  is  undeniable 
that  Shakspere  had  no  hesitation  in  taking  his  material 
wherever  he  found  it  and  in  "conveying"  whatever  he  could 
lay  hands  on.  The  source  of  his  inspiration  can  be  found 
now  in  an  English  chronicler  and  again  in  a  Greek  his- 
torian. He  was  equally  ready  to  snatch  the  hint  for  a 
tragic  situation  from  a  brief  Italian  tale  and  to  purloin 
an  entire  comic  plot  from  an  English  romance.  On  occa- 
sion he  went  even  further  and  despoiled  contemporary 
English  playwrights  of  complete  plays,  making  his  profit 
out  of  their  construction  as  well  as  out  of  their  invention. 
In  fact,  there  are  only  two  of  his  pieces,  his  earliest 
comedy,  'Love's  Labour's  Lost,'  and  his  latest  comedy, 
the  'Tempest,'  of  which  the  ultimate  sources  have  abso- 
lutely escaped  discovery  by  the  diligent  detectives  of 
modern  scholarship. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  as  well  to  state  the  case  against 
Shakspere  as  emphatically  as  possible,  classifying  the 
several  exhibits  which  have  been  introduced  in  evidence 
to  corroborate  the  charge  of  plagiarizing.  He  made  four 
plays  out  of  material  which  he  found  in  Plutarch: 
'Timon  of  Athens,'  'Coriolanus,'  'Julius  Caesar'  and 
'Antony  and  Cleopatra.'  To  these  pieces,  taken  from 
Greek  and  Roman  history,  he  added  thirteen  pieces  taken 
from  British  history,  for  which  his  main  reliance  was 
Holinshed:  the  two  parts  of  'Henry  IV,'  'Henry  V,' 
the  three  parts  of 'Henry  VI,'  'Henry  VIII,'  'Richard  II,' 
*  Richard  III,'  'King  John,'  'Macbeth,'  'King  Lear'  and 
'Cymbeline.'  These  plays,  the  four  on  classic  themes 
and  the  thirteen  on  modern,  were  founded  on  what 
Shakspere  believed  to  be  fact;  but  he  was  equally  willing 
to  levy  also  upon  what  he  knew  to  be  fiction. 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  53 

From  three  contemporary  English  novelists  (two  work- 
ing in  prose  and  one  in  verse)  he  borrowed  the  full  frame- 
work of  ' Romeo  and  Juliet,'  'As  You  Like  It'  and  the 
'Winter's  Tale.'  And  from  the  varied  collections  of  the 
earlier  Italian  novelists  as  these  had  reappeared  in  French 
and  English  translations,  he  derived  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, incidents  or  episodes  and  sometimes  even  the  cen- 
tral story  for  ten  of  his  pieces:  the  'Merchant  of  Venice,' 
'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  the  'Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,' 
'Much  Ado  about  Nothing,'  'Twelfth  Night,'  'All's  Well 
that  Ends  Well,'  'Measure  for  Measure,'  'Othello,' 
'Pericles'  and  'Cymbeline.' 

It  has  been  noted  already  that  nothing  which  can 
fairly  be  called  a  source  has  been  discovered  for  two  of 
his  comedies,  'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  and  the  'Tempest'; 
apparently  the  stories  of  this  pair  of  plays  are  due  to 
Shakspere's  invention.  In  three  other  comedies  he  may 
have  utilized  scant  suggestions  from  fiction,  but  he  seems 
to  have  relied  mainly  on  himself;  these  are  the  'Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,'  the  'Merry  Wives  of  Windsor' 
and  'Much  Ado  about  Nothing.'  And  there  are  eight 
plays  wherein  the  construction  of  the  plot,  the  articula- 
tion of  the  separate  episodes  is  apparently  to  be  credited 
to  Shakspere  himself,  although  he  availed  himself  of  situ- 
ations and  even  of  the  sequence  of  events  provided  for 
him  by  earlier  writers:  'Julius  Caesar,'  'All's  Well  that 
Ends  Well,'  'Troilus  and  Cressida,'  'Macbeth,'  'Antony 
and  Cleopatra,'  'Timon  of  Athens,'  'Coriolanus'  and 
'Cymbeline.' 

To  offset  these  eight  pieces  in  which  the  scaffolding 
of  the  plot  seems  to  be  due  to  Shakspere's  own  ingenuity 
and  to  his  own  industry,  there  are  at  least  fourteen  of  his 
plays  which  we  now  know  to  have  been  invented  and 


54  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

constructed  by  one  or  another  of  his  predecessors  and 
contemporaries.  They  were  already  familiar  to  the  Eliza- 
bethan playgoer  when  Shakspere  undertook  to  refashion 
them  to  his  own  liking  or  to  the  later  needs  of  the  com- 
pany of  actors  for  which  he  worked.  Indeed,  several  of 
these  pieces  had  an  established  popularity  before  Shak- 
spere touched  them.  But  this  did  not  deter  him  from 
laying  violent  hands  on  them.  And  when  he  thus  levied 
on  the  work  of  others,  some  of  these  men  were  probably 
still  alive  to  be  spectators  at  the  performances  of  the  new 
plays  he  had  made  out  of  their  old  plays.  Attention 
must  be  called  to  the  fact  that  among  the  dramas  which 
Shakspere  thus  took  over  ready-made  are  two  of  the  mas- 
terpieces that  most  securely  buttress  his  fame — 'Hamlet' 
and  'King  Lear.'  The  other  twelve  are  'Titus  Androni- 
cus/  the  three  parts  of  'Henry  VI, '  the  two  parts  of 
'Henry  IV,'  'Henry  V,'  'Richard  II'  and  'Richard  III,' 
'King  John,'  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew'  and  'Measure  for 
Measure.'  It  is  even  possible  that  this  list  is  not  complete, 
since  four  other  pieces  may  have  been  borrowed  from 
earlier  plays  which  are  now  lost:  the  'Comedy  of 
Errors,'  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,'  the  'Merchant 
of  Venice'  and  'Troilus  and  Cressida.'  The  remoter  orig- 
inal of  the  'Comedy  of  Errors'  is  a  Latin  play.  Perhaps 
'Twelfth  Night'  should  also  be  included  in  this  list,  since 
most  of  its  plot  may  have  been  derived  from  an  Italian 
play. 

VI 

This  is  the  case  against  Shakspere's  originality,  frankly 
and  fully  stated.  At  first  sight,  it  may  appear  incontro- 
vertible. A  hasty  verdict  might  condemn  Shakspere  to 
the  companionship  of  Boucicault,  and  to  dismiss  him  as 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  55 

unscrupulously  ready  to  take  any  fish  that  swam  into  his 
net.  He  appears  to  offer  himself  as  a  witness  in  behalf 
of  the  school-boy's  definition  that  "a  plagiarist  is  a  man 
who  writes  plays."  But  a  closer  consideration  shows 
that  the  various  groups  of  plays  do  not  all  stand  upon  the 
same  footing.  It  is  only  fair  to  distinguish  between  these 
groups  and  to  consider  them  severally.  First  of  all,  let  us 
deal  with  the  two  groups  which  are  derived  from  Plutarch 
and  from  Holinshed  (or  some  other  English  historian).  It 
is  obviously  absurd  to  cry  plagiarism  when  a  dramatist 
bases  a  play  upon  the  records  which  a  chronicler  has  col- 
lected. Even  according  to  the  loftiest  standard  of  lit- 
erary morality  in  the  twentieth  century,  a  poet  has  a  right 
to  interpret  anew  all  the  stories  that  the  historians  have 
narrated.  Indeed,  one  might  almost  say  that  the  facts 
of  the  chronicler  are  really  apprehended  by  most  of  us 
only  as  they  have  been  translated  into  the  fiction  of  the 
poet.  It  is  one  of  the  functions  of  history  to  serve  as 
the  handmaid  of  poetry.  The  scattered  happenings  set 
down  by  the  chronicler  glow  with  a  new  illumination  when 
they  are  perceived  by  the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine. 
The  poet  alone  is  possessed  of  the  philosopher's  stone 
which  changes  the  base  metal  of  mere  fact  into  the  pure 
gold  of  everlasting  truth. 

In  the  next  place  we  may  consider  two  other  groups, 
the  dramatizations  of  English  novels  and  the  dramas  more 
or  less  directly  derived  from  the  Italian  tales.  For  a  nov- 
elist to  assert  any  right  to  control  the  recasting  of  his 
romance  in  dramatic  form  is  a  comparatively  recent  de- 
velopment. No  such  claim  to  ownership  was  put  for- 
ward until  at  least  two  hundred  years  after  Shakspere's 
death;  and  it  received  little  legal  recognition  until  about 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.     The  older  view 


56  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

was  rather  that  the  dramatist  was  paying  a  compliment 
to  the  novelists  when  he  condescended  to  borrow  one  of 
their  plots.  For  example,  Marmontel,  in  the  preface  to 
his  'Moral  Tales,'  expressed  his  gratification  that  one  of 
his  stories  had  been  found  serviceable  as  the  foundation  of 
a  play  and  he  hoped  that  others  might  also  have  the  same 
good  fortune.  Evidently  he  felt  no  grievance;  and  his  at- 
titude was  that  of  every  writer  of  prose  fiction  a  hundred 
years  ago.  Even  in  the  early  nineteenth  century  Byron 
would  have  been  painfully  surprised  if  he  had  been 
accused  of  wrong-doing  because  he  made  his  'Werner'  out 
of  one  of  Miss  Lee's  'Canterbury  Tales.'  And  even  more 
recently  Tennyson  did  not  hesitate  to  take  the  plot  of  his 
narrative  poem  'Dora'  from  Miss  Mitford's  prose  narra- 
tive, 'Dora  Creswell.'  Of  course,  Tennyson  did  not  hide 
the  fact  that  he  had  undertaken  an  adaptation  of  a 
prose  tale;  this  stands  frankly  confessed  in  a  note,  which 
was  all  the  apology  he  felt  called  upon  to  make. 

The  same  plea  can  be  urged  even  more  potently  as  re- 
gards the  situations  and  even  the  entire  plots  which 
Shakspere  took  over  from  the  Italian  story-tellers.  Boc- 
caccio and  his  followers  had  gathered  a  treasury  of  narra- 
tives, tragic  and  comic,  out  of  which  all  the  Elizabethan 
playwrights  felt  privileged  to  help  themselves  at  will. 
And  so  have  the  later  poets  of  every  modern  tongue. 
Keats  and  Musset  and  Longfellow  held  it  to  be  part  of 
the  high  privilege  of  the  poet  to  bestow  a  new  setting 
upon  an  old  legend.  Shakspere  gave  to  the  'Othello' 
which  he  found  in  the  Italian  (or  in  an  English  adapta- 
tion of  the  Italian)  a  largeness,  an  elevation,  and  a  depth 
which  the  original  did  not  even  faintly  suggest;  and  by  so 
doing  he  made  the  story  his  own,  once  for  all,  even  if  it 
had  been  due  originally  to  the  invention  of  another. 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  57 

Now  we  come  to  a  group  of  plays,  more  than  a  third  of 
all  that  he  wrote,  in  which  Shakspere  was  not  dramatizing 
a  story,  long  or  short,  but  taking  over  bodily  a  play  al- 
ready written  in  English.  It  is  in  regard  to  this  group 
that  the  hostile  critics  take  their  last  stand.  They  would 
classify  Shakspere  with  Charles  Reade,  who  found  a  large 
part  of  the  plot  of  his  'Hard  Cash'  ready-made  in  the 
'Pauvres  de  Paris'  of  Brisebarre  and  Nus,  or  with  Dion 
Boucicault,  who  transmogrified  the  same  French  play  into 
the  'Streets  of  New  York.'  And,  at  first  sight,  the  charge 
may  appear  to  have  a  fairly  solid  foundation.  But  we 
may  begin  the  defense  by  entering  a  plea  of  confession 
and  avoidance,  and  by  explaining  that  Shakspere  was 
writing  in  the  seventeenth  century  and  not  in  the  twenti- 
eth. He  was  only  conforming  to  the  custom  of  his  own 
time.  Under  the  theatrical  condition  of  those  remote 
days,  a  play  did  not  belong  to  its  author  after  he  had  sold 
it  to  a  company  of  actors.  It  was  then  the  absolute  prop- 
erty of  its  purchasers;  and  they  did  not  hesitate  to  call  in 
other  writers  to  amend  it  and  bring  it  up  to  date.  Ben 
Jonson  was  thus  hired  to  make  additions  to  Kyd's  'Span- 
ish Tragedy.'  Indeed,  we  may  go  further  and  draw  atten- 
tion again  to  the  fact  that  a  play,  even  one  of  Shakspere's, 
was  not  then  considered  as  literature.  It  was  looked  upon 
much  as  we  nowadays  regard  an  article  in  a  cyclopedia,  as 
a  piece  of  work  which  the  purchaser  had  a  right  to  have 
revised  without  consulting  the  original  composer.  And 
apparently  the  playwrights  themselves  accepted  the  situa- 
tion, strange  as  this  may  seem  to  us  nowadays.  No  one 
of  those  whose  pieces  Shakspere  rewrote  ever  made  any 
protest — with  the  possible  exception  of  Greene,  whose 
dying  diatribe  seems  to  have  had  another  cause  than  this. 

There  was  then  nothing  extraordinary  in  this  attitude. 


58  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

It  existed  also  in  Spain  at  the  same  moment,  and  in 
France  even  later.  Two  of  Calderon's  most  striking 
dramas,  the  ' Alcalde  of  Zalamea'  and  the  'Physician  of 
His  Own  Honor/  are  founded  upon  earlier  dramas,  bearing 
the  same  titles  and  written  by  Lope  de  Vega.  Moliere's 
'Don  Garcie  de  Navarre'  was  probably  taken  straight 
from  his  Spanish  original;  but  his  'Don  Juan'  was  more 
or  less  directly  derived  from  a  French  version  of  an  Italian 
adaptation  from  the  original  Spanish.  And  it  would  not 
be  difficult  to  multiply  examples  of  this  bold  appropria- 
tion of  successful  plays  due  to  the  invention  and  to  the 
constructive  skill  of  earlier  playwrights  who  might  still 
survive.  This  practice  was  so  common  that  it  raised  no 
objection;  and  in  conforming  to  it,  Shakspere  was  in  no 
sense  singular.  If  he  had  been  taken  to  task  he  would 
probably  have  alleged  in  rebuttal  that  he  had  the  war- 
rant of  custom — and  of  a  custom  which  no  one  was  to 
attack  for  many  a  year  after  his  bones  had  been  laid  to 
rest  at  Stratford. 


VII 

These  are  the  excuses,  more  or  less  valid,  which  may  be 
made  for  Shakspere,  when  we  condescend  for  the  moment 
to  take  this  accusation  of  plagiarism  seriously.  If  we 
allow  a  youthful  critic  to  set  up  an  austere  standard  of 
absolute  originality  and  to  insist  that  a  poet  must  always 
invent  the  themes  he  chooses  to  present,  then  Shakspere 
stands  convicted  a  plagiarist  and  as  one  of  the  most 
shameless  of  plagiarists — to  be  put  in  the  pillory  by  the 
side  of  Calderon  and  of  Moliere.  But  to  assume  this 
absurd  attitude,  to  set  up  this  false  standard,  to  take  this 
ridiculous  charge  seriously,  is  a  confession  of  juvenility. 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  59 

It  discloses  us  immediately  as  absurdly  ignorant  of  the 
history  of  literature  and  frankly  unfamiliar  with  the  high- 
est function  of  the  poetic  imagination. 

Great  poets  rarely  invent  their  myths.  They  are  not 
specially  interested  in  mere  invention,  reserving  the  full 
force  of  their  imagination  rather  for  the  nobler  work  of 
interpretation.  Milton  found  his  loftiest  inspiration  in 
telling  anew  the  Fall  of  Man,  the  very  oldest  of  tales. 
Goethe  seized  with  avidity  the  fascinating  figure  of  Faust, 
despite  the  fact  that  Marlowe  had  already  projected  it 
with  epic  vigor.  Byron  was  attracted  to  Don  Juan, 
although  Moliere  had  already  depicted  powerfully  the 
sinister  personality  of  this  insatiable  seducer.  The  Greek 
dramatic  poets  delighted  in  presenting,  each  in  his  turn, 
the  dominant  characters  of  Hellenic  legend,  (Edipus  and 
Agamemnon  and  Medea.  Modern  dramatic  poets, 
Italian  and  British  and  American,  have  yielded  to  the 
charm  of  Francesca  da  Rimini.  Tennyson  went  back  to 
the  'Morte  d'Arthur';  and  Longfellow  went  back  to  the 
' Golden  Legend.'  Morris  returned  to  the  Sagas;  and 
Wagner  returned  to  the  'Niebelungen  Lied.' 

It  seems  as  though  the  poets  often  shrink  disdainfully 
from  any  effort  for  originality  of  situation  and  of  story. 
Apparently  they  feel  that  invention  is  only  a  minor  func- 
tion of  the  imagination,  and  that  its  major  function  is 
the  illumination  of  themes  already  invented.  Whenever 
they  are  attracted  to  a  subject  they  take  it  for  their  own, 
whether  it  is  old  or  new;  they  appropriate  it,  they  assimi- 
late it,  they  reincarnate  it  and  reinvigorate  it,  never 
troubled  by  the  fact  that  they  did  not  invent  it.  They 
needed  it  and  they  found  it  ready  to  their  hand.  Shelley 
was  speaking  for  the  rest  of  the  gild  of  poets  when  he 
recalled  "the  venerable  allegory  that  the  muses  are  the 


60  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

daughters  of  memory;  not  one  of  the  nine  was  ever  said 
to  be  the  daughter  of  invention. " 

The  poets  do  not  seek  for  originality  because  they  know 
that  it  is  to  be  found  inside  and  not  outside.  The  external 
originality  which  has  been  sought  for  is  likely  to  have  an 
aspect  of  eccentricity.  Why  strain  and  struggle  for  nov- 
elty of  plot?  Are  not  the  old  tales  the  best  after  all? — 
that  they  have  survived  is  evidence  they  have  pleased 
many  and  pleased  long.  And  after  all,  is  novelty  actually 
possible?  Gozzi  declared  that  there  were  only  thirty-six 
dramatic  situations;  and  when  Goethe  and  Schiller  tried 
to  catalogue  these  situations  they  failed  to  find  as  many  as 
Gozzi  had  counted.  So  there  are  only  fifty-two  cards  in 
the  pack,  and  no  matter  how  strenuously  we  may  shuffle, 
the  hand  we  deal  ourselves  must  have  been  held  by  some 
other  player  in  the  long  ago. 

As  originality  of  plot  is  barely  possible,  it  is,  in  the  more 
elevated  planes  of  poetry,  not  really  important.  "We 
do  not  ask  where  people  get  their  hints,  but  what  they 
made  out  of  them,"  as  Lowell  said :  "  any  slave  of  the  mine 
may  find  the  rough  gem,  but  it  is  the  cutting  and  polishing 
that  reveal  its  heart  of  fire;  it  is  the  setting  that  makes  it  a 
jewel  to  hang  at  the  ear  of  Time."  Shakspere  profited  by 
hints  from  all  sorts  of  sources  and  he  knew  what  to  make 
out  of  them.  On  occasion  he  took  more  than  a  single 
rough  gem;  he  took  also  the  rude  necklace  into  which  a 
handful  of  stones  had  been  artlessly  arranged.  But  he 
it  was  who  revealed  their  heart  of  fire.  We  have  replev- 
ined  from  the  dust-bin  of  oblivion  the  complete  plays 
which  Shakspere  made  over  into  the  'Taming  of  the 
Shrew,'  'Henry  V  and  'King  Lear,'  and  they  are  barren 
and  empty  enough.  They  are  so  poor  that  we  marvel 
how  it  was  that  they  were  able  to  stimulate  Shakspere's 


SHAKSPERE  AS   REVISER  61 

imagination.  It  is  not  merely  that  Shakspere  bettered 
what  he  borrowed;  he  transfigured  it.  He  strengthened 
its  construction;  he  peopled  it  with  human  beings;  he 
lifted  it  up  to  the  exalted  ether  of  poetry;  he  gave  it  sig- 
nificance; in  a  word,  '  he  mixed  himself  up  with  whatever 
he  took — an  incalculable  increment"  (as  Lowell  said  of 
Gray). 

The  'Taming  of  the  Shrew'  is  not  one  of  Shakspere's 
richest  comedies;  its  structure  is  mechanical;  its  humor  is 
external;  its  gaiety  is  physical  rather  than  intellectual. 
But  when  we  compare  it  with  the  primitive  piece  out  of 
which  it  was  refashioned,  it  appears  for  the  moment 
almost  a  masterpiece.  The  rude  and  boisterous  farce  has 
been  made  into  an  exuberant  comedy  having  a  recogniz- 
able resemblance  to  human  nature.  And  what  Shak- 
spere did  in  comedy,  he  did  also  and  even  better  in  trag- 
edy, as  we  discover  when  we  contrast  his  '  King  Lear'  with 
the  earlier  piece  wThich  he  chose  to  make  over.  By  some 
strange  alchemy  of  the  imagination  that  which  was  cheap 
became  precious  and  that  which  was  tawdry  became  sub- 
lime. The  story  is  but  little  altered — far  too  little  for  our 
modern  taste;  and  yet  his  magic  touch  has  transmuted 
what  he  took,  purging  it  of  most  of  its  brutality  and 
charging  it  with  a  significance  unsuspected  by  the  un- 
inspired originator  of  the  plot.  That  which  Shakspere 
found  a  violent  piece  of  Elizabethan  melodrama  he  left  a 
marvelous  illustration  of  eternal  tragedy. 


CHAPTER  IV 
HIS  EARLIEST  COMEDIES 

I 

The  development  of  Shakspere  as  a  playwright  is  like 
his  development  as  a  poet,  in  that  it  divides  itself  natu- 
rally into  three  periods  not  sharply  set  off  from  one  an- 
other and  yet  easily  perceived  when  we  consider  the  prob- 
able sequence  of  his  plays.  As  a  playwright  he  began  by 
a  period  of  experiment  during  which  he  was  cautiously 
studying  the  secrets  of  the  art  and  trying  to  find  out  by 
experience  how  to  put  a  story  together  so  that  it  might 
be  effective  on  the  stage.  He  was  diligent  in  discovering 
the  fittest  devices  for  exposition  and  for  construction;  and 
he  was  alert  in  analyzing  the  methods  of  his  predecessors 
and  swift  to  appropriate  the  effects  which  he  found  avail- 
able for  his  own  purpose.  As  a  result  of  this  assiduous 
training,  his  hand  gained  a  more  assured  certainty  of 
stroke;  and  in  time  he  attained  to  an  undisputed  mastery 
when  he  knew  exactly  what  he  wanted  to  do,  when  he 
knew  also  how  best  to  do  this,  and  when  he  knew  himself. 
To  this  second  period  belong  the  most  charming  of  his 
romantic-comedies  and  the  most  searching  of  his  trage- 
dies. Then  toward  the  close  of  his  career  in  London  his 
effort  is  obviously  less  intense,  as  though  he  had  begun 
to  weary  of  his  incessant  productivity,  nearly  twoscore 
plays  in  only  a  little  longer  than  a  score  of  years.     His 

interest  in  the  ever  fresh  problems  of  construction  seems 

62 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  63 

then  to  slacken  and  he  no  longer  spends  his  strength  in 
putting  together  a  satisfactory  framework  for  his  story, 
content  to  endow  it  with  vital  characters  and  to  ennoble 
it  with  the  lavish  wealth  of  his  poetry. 

The  three  periods  of  his  development  as  a  poet  almost 
coincide  with  the  three  periods  of  his  development  as  a 
playwright.  In  his  youth  he  is  rather  lyric  than  truly 
dramatic;  in  his  earlier  pieces  the  poetry  rather  is  his  own, 
the  result  of  his  own  effort,  than  the  inevitable  self- 
expression  of  his  characters.  His  verse  is  deliberately 
clever  and  it  abounds  in  rimes  and  in  conceits.  He  is 
playing  with  words  rather  than  with  ideas;  and  his  glitter- 
ing lines  repeat  the  graceful  note  which  echoes  and  re- 
echoes through  all  the  Elizabethan  sonneteers.  But  his 
pretty  speeches  are  not  yet  stirred  by  genuine  passion  or 
weighted  by  large  wisdom.  This  early  verse  suggests  that 
he  has  not  then  within  him  a  great  deal  which  demands 
utterance;  and  we  can  almost  catch  him  in  the  act  of 
padding  out  his  lines  with  precious  epithets  and  with 
remote  comparisons,  such  as  were  in  high  favor  among  all 
the  young  poets  of  the  day.  In  time  he  masters  his  instru- 
ment and  discovers  that  he  has  a  fuller  breath  with  which 
to  play  on  it.  He  grows  in  power  and  in  passion,  in  in- 
sight and  in  understanding.  The  thought  rarely  needs  to 
be  pieced  out;  and  often  the  liquid  lines  flow  on  one  after 
the  other  with  a  perfect  balance  between  form  and  con- 
tent. With  this  ultimate  harmony  of  matter  and  manner 
all  effort  disappears.  Then  toward  the  end  he  has  so  en- 
riched his  mind  that  it  was  always  overflowing;  and  he 
has  too  much  to  say  for  perfect  ease  of  delivery.  His 
thoughts  are  pressed  down  and  running  over;  and  his  lines 
lack  the  fluidity  of  the  middle  period.  His  verse  is  so 
overcharged   with    meaning    that   it    staggers    under   its 


64  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

burden;  and  the  words  rush  out  so  tumultuously  that  they 
stumble  over  each  other.  And  as  this  final  period  of  his 
development  as  a  poet  almost  coincides  with  the  final 
period  of  his  development  as  a  playwright,  we  find  in  his 
latest  plays  stories  loosely  tumbled  together,  but  carried 
on  by  characters  instinct  with  veracity  and  dowered  with 
an  amplitude  of  wisdom  and  a  variety  of  passion,  never 
achieved  by  any  other  dramatic  poet. 

It  is  only  by  bearing  in  mind  these  successive  periods 
of  his  progress  as  a  playwright  and  as  a  poet  that  we  can 
account  for  the  comparative  emptiness  of  his  first  attempts 
as  a  dramatist.  Between  1590  and  1593  (a  little  earlier 
and  a  little  later),  he  accomplished  the  thankless  task  of 
revising  'Titus  Andronicus'  and  the  three  parts  of  ' Henry 
VI'  and  he  also  composed  four  more  or  less  original  come- 
dies, '  Love's  Labour's  Lost,'  the  '  Comedy  of  Errors,'  the 
'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  and  a  'Midsummer  Night's 
Dream.'  In  the  revision  of  'Titus  Andronicus'  and  of 
'Henry  VI'  we  can  discover  little  or  nothing  that  we 
recognize  as  indubitably  Shaksperian.  In  the  four  come- 
dies we  find  much  that  is  marked  with  his  image  and 
superscription.  In  them  he  put  not  a  little  of  himself, 
of  the  youthful  lyrist  who  was  then  engaged  also  in  writ- 
ing 'Venus  and  Adonis'  and  the  'Rape  of  Lucrece.'  We 
cannot  be  certain  as  to  the  exact  order  in  which  these  four 
comedies  were  produced;  but  we  have  a  conviction  that 
they  followed  one  another  on  the  stage  in  swift  succession. 
They  were  not  task-work,  undertaken  solely  at  the  behest 
of  his  colleagues  of  the  playhouse;  they  were  the  result 
of  the  spontaneous  exercise  of  his  juvenile  cleverness. 
They  amply  display  his  inventive  ingenuity,  his  ready  wit, 
his  lyric  grace,  and  his  ardent  desire  to  spy  out  the  secrets 
of  play-making. 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  65 

These  four  comedies,  pleasant  as  they  may  be  in  their 
several  ways,  are  after  all  only  the  tentative  experiments 
of  an  inexperienced  dramatic  poet  in  his  'prentice  years; 
and  we  have  no  right  to  be  disappointed  if  we  do  not 
perceive  in  them  the  unmistakable  excellence  of  the  mas- 
terpieces of  his  middle  years.  It  would  be  absurd  to  seek 
in  them  for  the  ample  fervor  of  his  later  verse  or  for  the 
strong  simplicity  of  his  later  plots,  for  the  full  warm 
humor  to  which  he  was  soon  to  attain  or  for  the  incom- 
parable power  of  creating  vital  characters  and  of  piercing 
to  the  soul  of  man  at  the  moment  of  ultimate  crisis. 
They  are  what  they  had  to  be  at  this  epoch  of  his  evolu- 
tion; and  most  of  them  are  interesting  to  us  now,  not  so 
much  for  their  own  sake  as  for  the  sake  of  their  author. 
Only  one  of  them,  a  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream/  has 
really  contributed  to  his  cosmopolitan  reputation;  and  his 
fame  would  be  but  little  diminished  if  he  were  not  known 
to  be  the  author  of  the  other  three. 


II 

'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  is  believed  to  be  Shakspere's 
earliest  original  piece;  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  original 
of  all  in  so  far  as  the  story  itself  is  concerned,  which  seems 
to  be  of  his  own  contriving.  Unavailing  search  has  been 
made  to  ascertain  the  source  of  his  plot;  and  we  may  well 
doubt  whether  it  will  ever  be  discovered,  since  this  plot 
is  exactly  what  a  clever  and  aspiring  young  fellow  would 
be  likely  to  make  up  out  of  his  own  head  when  he  com- 
mences playwright  and  wThen  he  does  not  know  enough 
about  human  nature  to  be  willing  to  rely  on  it.  A  king 
and  three  of  his  courtiers  solemnly  renounce  the  society 
of  women  for  three  years;  and  they  immediately  meet  a 


66  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

princess  with  three  of  her  ladies.  The  king  promptly  falls 
in  love  with  the  princess,  and  each  of  his  three  courtiers 
falls  in  love  with  one  of  her  ladies.  This  is  an  artificial 
theme;  it  is  arbitrary  in  its  exactness;  and  the  comedy 
built  upon  it  is  squarely  symmetrical  in  its  handling. 
The  invented  tale  is  but  little  related  to  real  life;  it  is 
thin  and  devoid  of  the  persuasive  humor  of  true  comedy. 

'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  has  been  described  not  unfairly 
as  "polite  comic  opera."  It  is  a  testimony  to  the  juvenil- 
ity of  its  author,  because  it  is  fanciful,  not  to  call  it  fan- 
tastic, superficial  in  its  insight  and  mechanical  in  its  con- 
struction, with  its  successive  episodes  carefully  balancing 
each  other  and  with  its  final  pairing  off  of  the  four 
wooers  hopelessly  forsworn  and  exposed  to  one  another's 
derision.  Its  action  is  external  rather  than  internal  since 
its  movement  is  due  to  the  direct  intervention  of  the 
author  himself,  pulling  his  puppets  to  and  fro  and  allow- 
ing them  little  exercise  of  free  will. 

Yet  the  piece  begins  brightly  and  the  exposition  is 
adroitly  managed.  The  king  and  his  three  courtiers  pro- 
claim their  solemn  pact  at  the  opening  of  the  play. 
Then,  after  certain  avowedly  comic  characters  have  been 
introduced,  the  princess  and  her  ladies  discuss  the  king 
and  his  courtiers,  characterizing  them  wittily.  Expecta- 
tion is  thus  aroused  for  the  meeting  of  the  four  future 
lovers  with  their  four  future  lady-loves.  But  thereafter 
the  action  flags  and  the  young  author  has  failed  to  build 
up  a  sequence  of  comic  situations  to  set  forth  the  several 
aspects  of  his  theme.  He  relies  rather  on  wit-combats; 
and  it  is  not  until  the  comedy  is  three-quarters  finished 
that  a  really  humorous  situation  is  developed  to  revive 
the  drooping  interest  of  the  spectators.  At  last,  seem- 
ingly having  run  out  of  matter,  the  author  bolsters  up  the 


HIS  EARLIEST  COMEDIES  67 

final  scenes  with  the  buffoonery  of  an  ill-acted  mask, 
filled  with  figures  of  fun,  brought  on  only  that  the  lordly 
lovers  may  laugh  at  them.  It  is  a  trick  of  artistic  imma- 
turity to  introduce  characters  making  fools  of  themselves 
solely  that  the  brighter  persons  in  the  play  may  be 
allowed  to  scoff.  This  is  akin  to  primitive  practical 
joking;  and  not  often  does  it  move  an  audience  to 
mirth. 

The  play  is  not  adequately  plotted,  nor  is  its  story 
carried  on  by  characters  of  any  validity.  The  king  and 
the  princess,  the  courtiers  and  the  ladies,  are  only  thin 
outlines  tinted  in  primary  colors,  with  little  of  the  shift- 
ing complexity  of  human  nature;  they  are  not  so  much 
true  characters  as  they  are  pleasant  parts  for  the  actors. 
The  more  broadly  humorous  persons  in  the  play  are 
intended  to  contrast  with  the  light  comedy  of  the  princely 
double  quartet;  and  they  are  traditional  stage-types,  the 
braggart  and  the  pedant  and  the  clown.  Thus  they  also 
are  parts  for  the  actors  rather  than  recognizable  human 
beings.  There  is  no  need  for  wonder  that  Shakspere, 
when  he  was  making  his  first  venture  as  an  original  play- 
wright, and  at  the  moment  when  he  was  about  to  write 
his  two  narrative  poems,  should  rely  rather  on  his  decora- 
tion than  on  his  construction,  and  that  with  the  success 
of  the  courtly  type  of  comedy  before  him,  he  should  then 
believe  brisk  and  brilliant  dialogue  to  be  an  acceptable 
substitute  for  dexterity  of  situation  and  for  veracity  of 
character.  This  belief  had  been  shared  by  many  another 
witty  young  fellow;  and  it  is  responsible  for  the  pervading 
glitter  in  the  text  of  Congreve  and  Sheridan,  who  com- 
posed all  their  comedies  before  they  came  to  their  years 
of  discretion. 

The  dialogue  is  undeniably  clever,  even  if  it  reveals 


68  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

itself  as  too  conscious  of  its  own  cleverness,  and  even  if 
it  is  not  always  as  clever  as  it  seeks  to  be.  Congreve  once 
declared  that  a  comedy  by  one  of  his  contemporaries  con- 
tained many  lines  which  looked  like  wit  and  yet  were  not 
wit;  and  this  criticism  lies  also  against  'Love's  Labour's 
Lost.'  Even  when  the  wit  is  indisputable,  it  is  often  only 
verbal;  it  is  not  rooted  in  observation  of  life;  it  does  not 
flower  out  of  character;  and  it  does  not  relate  itself  neces- 
sarily to  the  situation.  The  merry  jests  which  besprinkle 
the  speeches  of  the  lords  and  ladies  are  not  so  much  their 
own  spontaneous  utterances  as  witticisms  at  large,  which 
might  be  transferred  at  will  from  one  character  to  an- 
other. And  where  these  speeches  are  poetic  rather  than 
witty,  the  poetry  is  lyric  rather  than  dramatic.  There  is  a 
larger  proportion  of  rime  than  in  any  other  of  Shakspere's 
plays;  and  the  rimes  not  only  pair  in  couplets,  but  arrange 
themselves  in  stanzas  and  sometimes  even  in  sonnets. 
This  lends  an  added  artificiality  to  the  dialogue  and 
seems  to  detract  still  further  from  the  sincerity  of  the 
comedy  as  a  whole.  But  this  lyric  quality  has  a  youthful 
charm  of  its  own.  As  the  pleasant  verse  falls  upon  our 
ears,  it  seems  almost  as  if  we  could  see  the  young  poet 
delighting  in  his  own  playing  with  words  and  rejoicing 
at  his  own  ingenuity  in  bringing  forth  appropriate  con- 
ceits. He  tosses  a  word  in  the  air  and  bandies  it  to  and 
fro  from  speaker  to  speaker,  with  obvious  satisfaction  in 
the  cunning  of  his  hand. 

It  must  be  noted,  however,  that,  even  if  the  brilliancy 
of  the  dialogue  is  sometimes  rather  cheap  and  sometimes 
a  little  far-fetched,  the  author  himself  is  on  the  side  of 
healthy  common  sense.  He  brings  to  grief  the  king  and 
his  courtiers  who  have  unnaturally  resolved  to  forego  the 
society  of  the  other  sex.     And  he  satirizes  the  affected 


HIS  EARLIEST  COMEDIES  69 

foppery  of  speech  which  was  more  or  less  prevalent  at  the 
time  when  he  wrote.  In  some  of  its  aspects  '  Love's 
Labour's  Lost'  suggests  the  'Precieuses  Ridicules'  and  in 
others  it  recalls  the  'Femmes  Savantes,'  however  obvi- 
ously inferior  it  may  be  to  either  of  Moliere's  plays  in 
solidity  of  plot,  in  robustness  of  character-delineation,  in 
breadth  of  humor  and  in  importance  of  theme.  When 
Moliere  wrote  the  first  of  these  two  comedies  he  was 
already  an  experienced  playwright;  when  Shakspere  wrote 
'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  he  was  only  at  the  threshold  of  his 
career,  taking  his  first  timid  steps  as  a  dramatist. 

Ill 

Yet  there  are  few  signs  of  this  inexpert  timidity  in  the 
'Comedy  of  Errors,'  which  was  probably  the  play  Shak- 
spere produced  immediately  after  'Love's  Labour's  Lost.' 
Plot,  which  is  the  special  quality  that  the  earlier  piece 
lacks,  is  the  special  quality  upon  which  he  successfully 
concentrates  his  effort  in  the  later  piece.  Hazlitt  as- 
serted that  Shakspere  "appears  to  have  bestowed  no  great 
pains"  on  the  'Comedy  of  Errors,'  a  curiously  inept  com- 
ment when  we  consider  the  adroit  complication  of  its 
action.  Complexity  of  intrigue  cannot  be  achieved  with- 
out taking  pains;  and  there  is  no  play  of  Shakspere's,  not 
even  his  major  masterpieces  of  construction,  'Romeo  and 
Juliet'  and  'Othello,'  to  the  plotting  of  which  he  must 
have  given  more  conscientious  labor.  The  skeleton  of 
the  action  is  articulated  with  a  skill  really  surprising  in  a 
young  playwright,  working  in  a  century  when  the  princi- 
ples of  dramatic  construction  had  been  little  considered. 
Perhaps  its  author  had  felt  the  emptiness  of  the  story  in 
'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  and  had,  therefore,  resolved  that 


7o  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  'Comedy  of  Errors'  should  be  free  from  this  defect 
at  least. 

Taine  once  declared  that  the  art  of  play-making  is  as 
capable  of  improvement  as  the  art  of  watchmaking;  and 
in  this  piece  the  art  of  the  play-maker  is  closely  akin  to 
that  of  the  watchmaker,  since  its  merits  are  mainly 
mechanical.  And  the  amusement  which  the  '  Comedy  of 
Errors'  arouses  even  to-day  when  it  is  acted  in  the  theater 
is  the  result  of  a  dexterous  adjustment  of  situations  as  one 
equivoke  follows  another  and  as  one  twin  is  confused  with 
the  other.  There  is  an  adroit  crescendo  of  comic  per- 
plexity. Considered  merely  as  a  mechanism,  as  an  art- 
fully contrived  imbroglio,  due  to  a  constantly  increasing 
comicality  caused  by  a  succession  of  mistakes  of  identity, 
the  ' Comedy  of  Errors'  demands  high  praise  even  to-day, 
although  the  later  pupils  of  Scribe  have  achieved  farces  of 
a  more  surprising  intricacy.  Entangled  as  the  char- 
acters are  in  the  deliberately  devised  complications,  the 
action  is  transparently  clear  to  the  spectator,  who  gains 
an  added  pleasure  from  his  superior  knowledge  hidden 
from  the  persons  of  the  play,  all  of  them  lost  in  a  puz- 
zling labyrinth  to  which  they  have  no  clue. 

Shakspere  borrows  the  plan  of  his  play  from  the 
'Menaechmi'  of  Plautus;  and  he  may  have  got  the  hint  of 
doubling  Dromio  from  the  'Amphitruo'  of  the  same 
Latin  author,  although  possibly  he  derives  this  idea  from 
an  earlier  piece,  the  'History  of  Error,'  which  is  known  to 
have  existed,  but  which,  like  so  many  other  Elizabethan 
dramas,  is  now  lost.  Yet  Shakspere's  play,  even  if  its 
imbroglio  'is  derived  from  the  Latin  play,  is  much  more 
than  a  mere  adaptation  from  Plautus.  The  English 
dramatist  may  lean  heavily  upon  the  Roman  playwright, 
but  he  completely  rehandles  the  material  he  takes  over 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  71 

from  the  Latin;  and  he  adds  to  it  not  a  few  of  the  most 
effective  episodes.  There  are  in  Plautus  twelve  instances 
of  mistaken  identity;  and  in  Shakspere  there  are  eigh- 
teen. Furthermore  Shakspere  cleanses  away  most  of 
the  vulgarity  flagrant  in  Plautus  and  perhaps  to  be  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  the  Latin  playwright  wrote  his 
pieces  to  be  performed  by  slaves  before  an  audience  of 
ignorant  freedmen  who  had  to  be  amused  at  all  costs. 

Farce  as  the  ' Comedy  of  Errors'  frankly  is — since  our 
interest  is  aroused  mainly  by  the  plot  itself  and  only  a 
little  by  the  characters  who  carry  it  on — none  the  less 
Shakspere  has  given  it  a  human  quality,  due  to  the  sym- 
pathetically drawn  figure  of  the  wife  and  to  the  delicately 
delineated  figure  of  her  sister.  He  has  also  stiffened  the 
story  by  the  early  introduction  of  ^Egeon,  the  father  of 
the  separated  Antipholi.  The  exposition  is  a  masterpiece 
of  invention;  and  here  the  playwright  had  a  difficult  prob- 
lem before  him.  For  the  spectators  to  enjoy  the  swift 
sequence  of  blunders  they  needed  to  know  all  about  the 
two  pairs  of  twins.  How  is  this  information  to  be  con- 
veyed to  them  before  either  pair  of  twins  appears  on  the 
stage?  Shakspere  opens  the  play  with  iEgeon  on  trial 
for  his  life,  than  which  nothing  could  more  certainly 
arrest  the  attention  of  the  audience.  In  his  search  for  his 
lost  sons  the  merchant  has  come  to  Ephesus,  in  defiance 
of  the  decree  which  forbade  any  Syracusan  to  land  upon 
its  shores  under  penalty  of  death.  In  self-defense  zEgeon 
explains  the  potent  reason  for  his  rashness;  and  thus  he 
not  only  puts  the  audience  in  possession  of  all  the  infor- 
mation they  need  for  the  comprehension  of  ensuing  per- 
plexities, but  also  awakens  interest  in  his  own  sad  plight, 
thereby  strengthening  the  serious  appeal  of  the  comic 
story. 


72  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

The  reappearance  of  iEgeon  toward  the  end  of  the 
play  gives  dignity  to  the  final  episodes.  Indeed,  Shak- 
spere  displays  here  for  the  first  time  his  appreciation  of 
the  value  of  mounting  up  steadily  to  a  climax.  At  first 
the  equivokes  are  those  of  the  Dromios  and  the  merriment 
these  arouse  is  plainly  farcical;  the  later  mistakes  in 
which  the  two  masters  are  involved  are  in  a  richer  vein 
of  humor;  and  when  Adriana  is  led  to  believe  that  she  has 
lost  her  husband's  love,  the  fun  has  a  serious  lining  and 
seems  to  point  to  an  impending  domestic  catastrophe. 
In  a  plot  relying  wholly  upon  the  elaborate  ingenuity  of 
its  machinery  there  is  little  space  for  the  portrayal  of 
character,  since  the  characters  can  be  only  what  the  situ- 
ations require  and  permit.  But  Adriana  is  a  genuine 
woman;  she  may  be  drawn  in  profile  only,  but  the  strokes 
are  true,  and  they  are  sufficient  to  make  us  recognize  her 
reality.  It  is  in  the  elevation  of  Adriana  that  Shakspere 
most  plainly  reveals  his  superiority  to  Plautus.  The  Eng- 
lish farce  is  funnier  than  the  Roman;  and  it  is  also  more 
human  and  more  humane.  Despite  the  frequent  beatings 
of  the  two  Dromios,  the  'Comedy  of  Errors'  is  less  callous 
than  the  'Menaechmi';  it  is  in  better  taste;  and  it  con- 
forms to  a  finer  standard  of  morals. 

The  charge  has  been  urged  that  in  putting  twin  serv- 
ants into  his  play  in  addition  to  twin  masters,  Shakspere 
doubles  the  improbability  of  the  theme.  But  even  when 
there  is  only  one  pair  of  twins  the  improbability  is  a  staring 
impossibility.  That  two  brothers  separated  in  boyhood, 
brought  up  in  different  countries,  should  as  full-grown 
men  be  so  alike  in  speech,  in  accent,  in  vocabulary,  in 
manner,  and  even  in  costume  that  the  wife  of  one  should 
take  the  other  for  her  own  husband — this  is  simply  incon- 
ceivable.    It  could  happen  to  two  pairs  of  twins  just  as 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  73 

easily  as  it  could  happen  to  one.  Impossible  as  this  may 
be,  it  is  the  postulate  of  the  play.  The  audience  must 
accept  it  or  they  debar  themselves  from  enjoying  the 
piece  which  is  founded  upon  this  impossibility.  Experi- 
ence proves  that  playgoers  are  always  willing  to  allow 
the  dramatist  to  start  from  any  point  of  departure  that  he 
may  choose,  provided  that  the  play  which  he  erects  upon 
this  premise  proves  to  possess  the  power  of  amusing  them. 
They  will  yield  this  license  even  when  the  theme  is  seri- 
ous, as  in  the  'Corsican  Brothers,'  and  still  more  willingly 
when  they  are  invited  only  to  laugh.  Coleridge  was  char- 
acteristically shrewd  when  he  declared  that  "the  defini- 
tion of  a  farce  is,  an  improbability  or  even  impossibility 
granted  at  the  outset,  see  what  odd  and  laughable  events 
will  fairly  follow  from  it." 

IV 

In  'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  Shakspere  had  relied  upon 
the  artificial  sparkle  of  the  dialogue,  as  in  the  '  Comedy 
of  Errors'  he  had  relied  on  the  mechanical  arrangement  of 
the  situations.  In  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  he  relies 
rather  upon  the  unexpected  misadventures  of  his  char- 
acters. He  seems  to  be  feeling  for  the  formula  of  that 
romantic-comedy  he  was  soon  to  achieve  in  the  'Merchant 
of  Venice'  and  in  'Much  Ado  about  Nothing';  and  per- 
haps there  is  no  reason  for  surprise  that  he  should  not 
be  able  to  attain  it  at  this  first  attempt.  The  compara- 
tive weakness  of  the  play  is  due  partly  to  the  fact  that 
Shakspere  does  not  yet  appreciate  the  full  possibilities  of 
romantic-comedy  and  partly  to  his  neglect  of  the  pains- 
taking construction  with  which  he  had  just  sustained  the 
'Comedy  of  Errors.'     He  is  seen  to  be  taking  at  once  a 


74  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

step  forward  and  a  step  backward.  He  is  aiming  at  a 
play  superior  in  kind  to  the  farce  which  preceded  it  and 
yet  he  is  negligent  in  providing  this  more  poetic  piece 
with  a  solidly  built  skeleton,  such  as  had  sustained  the 
less  poetic  piece.  The  'Comedy  of  Errors'  may  repose 
upon  an  arrant  impossibility,  but  it  is  an  amusing  speci- 
men of  its  type.  The  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  is  at 
once  more  ambitious  and  less  successful,  mainly  because 
Shakspere  fails  to  bestow  upon  the  comedy  of  loftier  pre- 
tension the  plausibility  with  which  he  had  covered  up  the 
impossibility  of  the  humbler  farce. 

The  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  is  so  loosely  put 
together,  so  casual  in  its  plotting  and  so  devoid  of  veri- 
similitude of  motive,  that  it  impresses  the  student  as 
probably  being  only  the  careless  throwing  on  the  stage  of 
some  contemporary  novel  of  amatory  haps  and  mishaps. 
Yet  no  one  story  seems  to  have  suggested  the  play;  appar- 
ently Shakspere  put  it  together  unaided,  helping  himself 
at  will  to  stock  characters  and  to  stock  episodes  from  the 
unreal  fictions  which  then  enjoyed  a  fleeting  popularity. 
Proteus  leaves  Julia,  to  whom  he  is  betrothed,  at  Verona 
and  joins  his  friend  Valentine  at  Milan.  Valentine 
vaunts  the  charms  of  Silvia;  and  when  Proteus  meets 
Silvia  he  falls  so  violently  in  love  with  her  that  he  forgets 
Julia  and  basely  betrays  Valentine's  plan  to  elope.  Julia 
disguises  herself  as  a  boy  (anticipating  Rosalind  and 
Viola) ;  and  Proteus  sends  her  to  bear  messages  of  love  to 
Silvia.  Valentine,  banished  from  Milan,  becomes  the 
leader  of  a  band  of  outlaws;  and  it  is  in  the  forest  that 
Proteus,  in  the  presence  of  Julia,  proffers  violence  to 
Silvia.  Valentine  overhears  this  and  rebukes  his  former 
friend,  who  promptly  abjures  his  evil  designs  and  expresses 
his  contrition.     Valentine  accepts  this  unconvincing  re- 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  75 

pentance  and  quite  inexcusably  offers  to  surrender  Silvia 
to  Proteus,  an  example  of  exalted  romanticist  self-sacrifice 
quite  out  of  nature.  Then  Julia's  disguise  is  discovered 
and  Proteus  instantly  returns  to  his  love  for  her: — 

What  is  in  Silvia's  face,  but  I  may  spy 
More  fresh  in  Julia's,  with  a  constant  eye? 

This  succession  of  startling  changes  in  fortune  and  in 
desire  is  perhaps  not  more  absurd  than  Shakspere  was  to 
show  us  later  in  other  plays;  but  in  the  'Two  Gentlemen 
of  Verona,'  the  characters  seem  to  be  inconsistent  almost 
for  the  sake  of  inconsistency.  They  are  wilfully  self-con- 
tradictory; and  the  spectators  can  never  guess  what  they 
will  do  next,  except  that  it  will  be  illogical  and  extrava- 
gant. Shakspere  makes  no  effort  to  give  sincerity  to  his 
sophisticated  story,  to  account  for  the  inexplicable  con- 
versions of  Proteus  or  to  justify  the  constancy  of  Julia  in 
disregard  of  his  outrageous  conduct.  The  characters  do 
not  act  like  men  and  women  of  flesh  and  blood;  nor  are 
they  moved  by  motives  which  we  are  willing  to  accept  as 
natural.  Shakspere  does  not  offer  to  palliate  any  of  these 
sudden  transformations  of  Proteus  or  to  explain  the  in- 
conceivable magnanimity  of  Valentine.  Probably  he  be- 
lieved that  these  things  were  pleasing  to  the  audience  of 
his  own  time,  the  standing  spectators  in  the  yard,  who 
thrilled  more  easily  in  unison  with  the  emotion  of  surprise 
than  with  the  emotion  of  recognition. 

It  is  only  fair  to  note  that  Shakspere  is  not  guilty  here 
of  greater  violence  to  human  nature  than  were  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  a  few  years  later,  after  Shakspere  him- 
self had  set  them  the  example  of  logical  adherence  to 
normal  conduct.  Where,  however,  the  'Two  Gentlemen 
of  Verona'  is  inferior  to  the  dramatic-romances  of  the  col- 


76  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

laborating  poets  is  not  in  unreality  but  in  dramatic  inter- 
est. 'Pilaster'  may  be  as  unreal  as  the  'Two  Gentlemen 
of  Verona'  but  it  is  theatrically  effective,  with  a  sweeping 
movement  and  a  surging  fire  of  emotion  wholly  lacking 
in  this  earliest  attempt  at  romantic-comedy.  Shakspere 
composes  this  feeble  play  almost  as  if  he  did  not  believe 
in  it  himself,  whereas  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  allow  them- 
selves to  be  carried  away  by  the  rush  of  their  own  story. 

In  'Philaster,'  again,  the  lack  of  plausibility  and  the 
unexpected  contradictions  of  character  are  occasional 
only  and  may  for  the  moment  be  concealed  from  us  by 
the  theatrical  effectiveness  of  the  situations  they  bring 
about,  whereas  in  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  the 
inconsistency  of  Proteus  is  the  mainspring  of  the  action. 
We  are  never  allowed  to  lose  sight  of  it;  and  yet  it 
does  not  result  in  situations  of  genuine  dramatic  power. 
There  are  more  effective  scenes  in  the  'Two  Gentlemen' 
than  in  'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  (which  was  almost  barren 
of  situation),  but  they  are  perhaps  less  effective  in  them- 
selves, since  we  are  forced  to  see  the  improbability  of  the 
means  whereby  they  arrive,  because  Shakspere  keeps  on 
calling  our  attention  to  the  unveracity  of  his  psychology. 
In  this  play,  however,  as  in  his  later  and  finer  romantic- 
comedies  the  heroines  are  truer  to  life  than  the  heroes. 
Julia  and  Silvia  are  genuine  women,  even  if  Proteus  and 
Valentine  are  only  manikins,  moved  hither  and  thither  to 
make  the  plot  work.  There  is  sincerity  in  both  of  them; 
and  in  Julia  there  is  pathos  also  and  even  poetry.  Experi- 
mental as  Shakspere's  handling  of  characters  may  be,  it 
is  here  founded  on  observation  and  on  insight. 

The  play,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  uninteresting  in  story 
and  clumsy  in  plot;  yet  it  evidences  the  slow  growth  of 
Shakspere's  ability  to  handle  character,  not  only  in  the 


HIS  EARLIEST  COMEDIES  77 

two  heroines  but  also  in  the  comic  figures.  It  is  obvious 
that  there  were  in  the  company  of  actors  to  which  he 
belonged  and  for  which  he  wrote  his  plays,  two  low  come- 
dians, two  "clowns"  as  they  were  then  called.  For  this 
pair  of  funny  men,  favorites  of  the  playgoer  who  joyed  in 
their  frequent  appearance  and  who  was  ready  to  laugh 
almost  even  before  they  opened  their  lips,  he  composed 
Costard  and  Dull  in  'Love's  Labour's  Lost,'  the  two  Dro- 
mios  in  the  'Comedy  of  Errors,'  and  Launce  and  Speed  in 
the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,'  as  he  was  later  to  fit 
them  with  the  young  and  the  old  Gobbo  in  the  'Merchant 
of  Venice.' 

The  clown  of  the  Elizabethan  theater  was  descended 
directly  from  the  Vice  of  the  medieval  stage,  a  welcome 
figure  who  claimed  a  large  license  of  speech.  In  the  dia- 
logue of  the  French  mysteries  the  part  of  the  sot  (as  the 
low  comedian  was  termed)  seems  sometimes  to  have  been 
left  blank,  the  histrionic  humorist  being  at  liberty  to  say 
whatever  came  into  his  head  so  long  as  he  could  evoke 
abundant  laughter.  From  Hamlet's  advice  to  the  Players 
we  can  see  that  Shakspere,  naturally  enough,  did  not  like 
his  clowns  to  speak  more  than  was  set  down  for  them. 
And  in  his  earliest  plays  he  takes  care  to  put  into  their 
mouths  the  kind  of  joke  the  spectator  expected  from 
them.  Costard  and  Dull,  and  the  pair  of  Dromios,  are 
little  more  than  buffoons,  bandying  jests  and  making  ver- 
bal quibbles;  they  are  prolific  in  the  traditional  quips  of 
the  jack-pudding,  unrelated  to  the  character  the  actor  is 
supposed  to  be  impersonating.  But  as  Shakspere  does  not 
wish  them  to  interpolate  jests  of  their  own,  he  writes  for 
them  jests  which  might  be  their  own.  Only  as  he  gains 
in  experience  does  he  raise  his  comic  parts  into  actual 
characters;  and  in  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  we  can 


78  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

perceive  the  transition,  since  Speed  is  still  a  mere  clown, 
while  Launce  is  already  almost  a  human  being  with  a  hu- 
morous individuality  of  his  own. 

V 

It  is  in  the  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream*  that  we  find 
the  first  of  Shakspere's  truly  comic  characters,  Bottom,  a 
largely  conceived  creature,  rich  in  humor  and  prefiguring 
the  robuster  and  riper  character  of  Falstaff.  Bottom  is 
not  deliberately  witty,  like  the  clowns  in  the  earlier  com- 
edies, cracking  jokes  beyond  their  capacity  and  bristling 
with  merely  verbal  jests.  He  is  the  first  character  Shak- 
spere  has  given  us  who  is  unconsciously  humorous,  funny 
in  spite  of  himself,  and,  therefore,  far  more  comic  than 
the  traditional  figures  sent  on  the  stage  to  enliven  the 
dialogue  with  external  witticisms.  In  Bottom  and  his 
mates  we  can  perceive  imagination  working  on  observa- 
tion. We  can  not  doubt  that  Bottom  is  taken  from 
life,  not  from  any  one  man,  but  from  intimate  acquaint- 
ance with  many  men.  Bottom  stands  on  his  own  feet;  he 
is  no  longer  the  slightly  transformed  Vice  of  the  medieval 
stage.  He  is  exuberant  in  humor  because  he  is  inexorably 
human.  Superb  in  self-conceit,  he  is  an  eternal  caricature 
of  the  amateur  actor,  fed  on  flattery  and  ready  to  under- 
take any  part  in  any  play  or  every  part  in  every  play. 

The  comicality  of  Bottom  is  most  ingeniously  enhanced 
by  his  juxtaposition  with  Titania.  There  is  poetic  irony 
in  the  spectacle  of  an  ethereal  fairy-queen  who  is  lost  in 
love  for  a  vulgar  clod  of  a  man  decked  with  an  ass's  head. 
If  'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  is  in  its  tone  polite  comic  opera, 
the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  is  in  its  theme  opera  com- 
{que,  recalling  the  librettos  of  the  'Dame  Blanche'  and 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  79 

'Fra  Diavolo,'  which  Scribe  made  for  Auber — except  that 
its  structure  lacks  the  deftness  of  Scribe's  handiwork.  So 
the  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream'  is  2l  f eerie,  a  fairy-play, 
with  its  magical  misadventures  and  with  its  sudden  trans- 
formations. It  is  one  of  the  most  graceful  and  charming 
of  Shakspere's  poetic  pieces  in  its  lyric  atmosphere,  arti- 
ficial and  fantastic,  yet  with  a  reality  of  its  own.  It  is 
the  most  exquisite  of  his  comedies,  standing  out  early  in 
the  list  of  his  plays,  much  as  the  'Tempest'  stands  out 
later.  It  is  a  pure  pleasure,  of  imagination  all  compact. 
It  is  the  earliest  of  his  plays,  comic  or  tragic,  to  demand 
inclusion  in  any  list  of  his  most  characteristic  pieces,  for 
although  it  may  not  be  one  of  his  absolute  masterpieces 
no  one  but  Shakspere  could  have  conceived  it. 

But  even  if  the  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream'  marks  an 
indisputable  advance  over  the  comedies  that  had  gone  be- 
fore it,  the  two  pairs  of  lovers  are  less  firmly  depicted  than 
those  in  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,'  and  the  element 
of  pathos  is  lacking.  The  poetry  is  in  the  atmosphere  of 
the  whole  play  rather  than  in  the  characters.  And  on 
more  careful  analysis,  we  can  perceive  that  the  dramatic 
poet  was  utilizing  more  adroitly  devices  he  had  already 
tested  in  the  preceding  plays.  Much  of  the  fun  is  evoked 
by  a  mistaken  identity  not  unlike  that  on  which  the 
'Comedy  of  Errors'  is  based;  but  in  the  'Midsummer 
Night's  Dream'  these  blunders  are  not  caused  by  the 
arbitrary  resemblances  of  brothers;  they  are  due  to  a 
wanton  act  of  magic,  done  before  the  eyes  of  the  spec- 
tator and  thereby  arousing  a  gleeful  anticipation  of  the 
inevitable  result.  Lysander  is  recreant  to  Helena,  as  Pro- 
teus forswears  Julia;  but  Lysander  is  constrained  by  a 
spell,  and  we  are  well  aware  that  he  will  gladly  return 
to  his  first  love  whenever  the  charm  is  removed.     Helena 


80  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

pursues  Lysander,  as  Julia  follows  Proteus;  and  we  sym- 
pathize with  her  more  heartily  because  we  see  that  her 
deserting  lover  is  not  as  despicable  as  Proteus,  since  he 
is  swayed  by  an  unsuspected  occult  power.  Lysander's 
fickleness  is  excusable  because  it  is  not  his  own  fault;  and 
we  welcome  therefore  the  ultimate  union  of  the  lovers, 
whereas  we  have  little  confidence  in  the  future  happiness 
of  Julia  and  Proteus. 

There  is  a  closer  resemblance  between  the  terminations 
of  the  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream'  and  ' Love's  Labour's 
Lost.'  The  performance  of  the  mask  in  the  earlier  play 
anticipates  the  performance  of  'Pyramus  and  Thisbe' 
in  the  later.  But  here  again  there  is  undeniable  improve- 
ment. Bottom  and  his  fellows  are  far  funnier  than  the 
caricatures  who  take  part  in  the  mask.  And  the  attitude 
of  those  for  whom  the  little  play  is  performed  has  also 
altered  for  the  better.  The  chief  characters  in  'Love's 
Labour's  Lost'  contemptuously  mock  at  the  maskers  and 
scorn  their  honest  efforts  to  amuse;  but  in  the  'Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,'  Theseus  is  kindly  and  tolerant, 
gently  refusing  to  scoff  and  considerately  taking  pleas- 
ure in  what  was  proffered  to  please  him.  Here  Shakspere 
reveals  his  growth  in  knowledge  of  the  world,  or  at  least 
in  both  courtesy  and  politeness.  It  may  be  admitted  that 
in  neither  of  these  comedies  is  the  final  entertainment  by 
amateurs  an  integral  part  of  the  play.  The  youthful  au- 
thor has  run  out  of  matter,  and  therefore  he  fills  up  with 
extraneous  interludes.  The  story  is  already  complete, 
but  the  play  has  to  go  on;  and  therefore  both  comedies 
are  furnished  with  postscripts  of  robust  buffoonery,  con- 
trived to  send  away  the  audience  gladdened  by  laughter. 
Here  Shakspere  was  doing  none  too  skilfully  very  much 
what  Moliere  was  to  do  in  the  next  century,  when  he  per- 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  81 

mitted  two  of  his  most  amusing  comedies,  the  '  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme'  and  the  'Malade  Imaginaire'  to  tail  off  into 
pure  burlesque.  Indeed,  this  is  not  unlike  what  Shak- 
spere  himself  was  to  do  again  in  the  '  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor,'  although  the  dancing  drollery  at  the  end  of 
that  lively  farce  has  a  much  closer  connection  with  the 
plot  of  the  play. 

This  one  deficiency  in  artistic  symmetry  once  noted, 
there  can  be  only  high  praise  for  the  construction.  The 
story  is  as  abundant  in  comic  situations  as  the  *  Comedy  of 
Errors/  while  its  mechanical  dexterity  is  far  more  closely 
concealed.  The  situations  are  logically  linked  together, 
each  of  them  developing  easily  from  the  one  that  went 
before.  The  skeleton  of  the  action  is  adroitly  articu- 
lated; and  the  exposition  is  most  satisfactory,  recalling 
that  of  the  '  Comedy  of  Errors,'  in  that  it  is  accomplished 
by  the  personal  statements  of  the  parties  in  interest  before 
the  ruler  of  the  state,  sitting  as  a  judge.  The  plot  may 
appear  complicated,  if  we  try  to  put  it  into  narrative,  yet 
it  is  simple  to  follow  in  action.  There  are  four  pairs  of 
lovers  in  all.  Theseus  and  his  bride,  awaiting  their  wed- 
ding, and  the  two  couples  of  young  men  and  maidens  are 
set  before  us  in  the  opening  scene.  A  little  later  Oberon 
and  Titania  let  us  learn  at  once  the  cause  of  their  bicker- 
ing, for  there  is  contention  in  fairy-land  as  there  is  a  clash 
of  desire  among  the  mortal  lovers.  Thus  the  drama  is 
sustained  and  stiffened  by  comic  conflict,  the  outcome  of 
which  the  spectators  await  with  joyous  anticipation. 

In  the  midst  of  these  poetic  figures,  fairies  and  mortals 
in  love,  are  the  prosaic  handicraftsmen,  headed  by  Bot- 
tom, horny-handed  sons  of  toil  with  artistic  aspirations. 
This  is  a  strange  medley  of  folk;  and  yet  there  is  no  dis- 
cordant note  in  all  the  lovely  comedy.     There  is  an  abid- 


82  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

ing  unity  of  tone;  everything  is  in  keeping;  and  one  misad- 
venture follows  another  without  raising  a  cavil  from  the 
most  censorious  critic.  The  whole  play  is  a  paradise  of 
dainty  delight.  Its  scene  may  declare  itself  in  Athens; 
but  it  is  an  Athens  where  the  intensely  British  Bottom  is 
at  home  and  where  fairies  dwell  in  the  neighboring  wood — 
an  Athens  surrounded  by  the  Forest  of  Arden  and  not 
remote  from  the  sea-coast  of  Bohemia — an  Athens  which 
is  the  capital  of  an  undiscovered  country,  illumined  by 
the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land. 

In  the  ' Midsummer  Night's  Dream' — as  also  in  the 
'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona/  although  less  obviously  in 
the  latter — Shakspere  is  employing  a  pattern  set  by  Lyly; 
he  is  devising  not  so  much  a  genuine  comedy  as  a  court 
entertainment,  a  show-piece,  bristling  with  pleasant  sur- 
prises and  adorned  with  agreeable  spectacle.  In  this 
effort  he  is  triumphantly  successful,  far  surpassing  the 
slighter  pieces  of  the  earlier  poet  in  whose  footsteps  he 
is  following. 

VI 

As  we  compare  these  four  comedies  we  can  see  that 
Shakspere  was  successful  in  accomplishing  his  design  in 
two  of  them,  the  ' Comedy  of  Errors'  and  the  'Midsum- 
mer Night's  Dream,'  and  also  that  he  was  less  successful, 
to  say  the  least,  in  the  execution  of  the  other  two,  'Love's 
Labour's  Lost'  and  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona.'  But 
even  if  the  latter  pair  must  be  dismissed  as  comparative 
failures,  they  contain  the  promise  of  his  later  success  with 
comedies  in  the  same  vein.  And  failures  as  they  may  be 
termed,  they  are  not  inferior  to  any  comedy  already  com- 
posed by  any  other  English  dramatist.    It  is  a  curious  fact 


HIS   EARLIEST  COMEDIES  83 

that  comedy  has  everywhere  developed  more  cautiously 
than  tragedy,  as  though  it  had  a  difficult  task  to  discover 
its  true  field.  Sophocles  had  found  a  final  model  for 
tragedy  long  before  Aristophanes  composed  his  shapeless 
lyrical-burlesques,  commingled  of  many  incongruous  ele- 
ments which  later  comedy  was  to  eject.  Corneille  climbed 
swiftly  to  the  height  of  tragedy,  while  his  attempts  at 
comedy  were  hesitating.  And  it  was  only  after  a  re- 
peated variety  of  tentative  essays  that  Moliere  was  en- 
abled at  last  to  achieve  the  fit  framework  for  his  spacious 
representation  of  manners  and  morals. 

Shakspere  came  comparatively  early  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  English  drama;  and  in  comedy,  at  least,  he 
was  but  little  aided  by  what  his  predecessors  had  been 
able  to  do.  Marlowe  had  given  power  to  the  chronicle- 
play;  and  Shakspere  found  this  ready  to  his  hand.  But 
no  man  of  genuine  comic  gift  had  devised  an  adequate 
method  for  the  humorous  portrayal  of  life.  There  is 
felicity  in  the  dialogue  of  Lyly's  courtly  pieces  composed 
to  be  acted  by  boys;  but  there  is  no  heartiness  of  fun  in  his 
delicately  devised  stories  and  no  breadth  of  comic  char- 
acterization. Greene  and  Peele  have  moments  when  they 
seem  to  foresee  what  comedy  might  become;  but  this  is  a 
fleeting  vision  only  and  never  a  solid  fact,  since  they  lacked 
the  sense  of  form  and  revealed  no  constructive  skill. 

This  is  at  once  the  explanation  and  the  excuse  for 
Shakspere's  hesitancy  in  these  earliest  comedies.  He 
was  groping  for  a  formula  of  comedy  which  no  one  of  his 
contemporaries  had  attempted.  They  had  left  him  no 
satisfactory  pattern  to  follow,  and  he  had  to  seek  it  for 
himself.  There  is  an  immense  advantage  to  any  artist — 
whatever  his  craft — when  he  can  adopt  a  frame  accept- 
able to  his  public  and  thus  feel  himself  free  to  concentrate 


84  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

his  full  effort  on  what  he  will  fill  it  with.  He  is  relieved 
from  uncertainty  and  can  give  his  mind  wholly  to  the 
matter,  taking  over  the  manner  to  which  his  audience  is 
already  accustomed. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  in  France,  for  example,  we 
perceive  that  Scribe  developed  a  formula  which  proved 
to  be  exactly  suited  to  the  needs  of  Augier  and  the 
younger  Dumas  when  they  began  their  careers  as  drama- 
tists. They  promptly  borrowed  his  method,  even  though 
they  might  immediately  modify  this  to  suit  their  own 
different  aims.  Ibsen,  in  his  turn,  found  awaiting  him 
the  pattern  prepared  by  Augier  and  Dumas;  he  began 
where  they  left  off,  rising  to  heights  to  which  they  did  not 
aspire,  but  enabled  to  do  this  only  because  he  could  stand 
on  their  shoulders. 

Shakspere  unfortunately  could  find  no  helpful  pattern  in 
the  comedies  of  his  predecessors;  and  as  a  result  he  never 
achieved  the  true  comedy-of-manners,  the  humorous  play 
of  which  the  action  is  caused  by  the  conflict  of  character 
with  character.  He  left  this  to  be  accomplished  later  by 
Moliere.  But  Shakspere  was  able  in  time  to  perfect  for 
his  own  use  the  formula  of  his  own  romantic-comedy,  a 
story  of  young  lovers  wooing  and  mating,  set  off  against 
a  tale  of  dark  intrigue,  which  sustained  and  strengthened 
the  slighter  fabric  of  his  central  theme.  And  perhaps  the 
chief  interest  which  'Love's  Labour's  Lost'  and  the  'Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona'  have  for  us  now  is  that  they  may 
be  considered  as  Shakspere's  earliest  ventures  into  the 
field  of  romantic-comedy.  They  may  be  regarded  as 
preliminary  sketches  for  the  finished  pictures  of  his  ma- 
turity. Biron  gives  us  a  foretaste  of  the  fuller  flavor  of 
Benedick;  and  Julia  is  a  forerunner  of  the  more  poetic 
and  more  pathetic  Viola. 


CHAPTER  V 
HIS  EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS 


In  these  earlier  comedies  Shakspere  is  experimenting  in 
construction  and  studying  how  to  put  together  plots  able 
to  arrest  and  to  retain  the  interest  of  the  spectators  who 
sat  on  the  stage  or  who  stood  in  the  yard  below.  Ap- 
parently he  feels  the  need  of  a  well-knit  sequence  of  situa- 
tions to  hold  together  a  story  which  lacks  the  support 
of  a  historic  figure.  But  he  is  not  subject  to  this  pres- 
sure when  he  returns  to  the  popular  chronicle-play.  He 
is  satisfied  to  take  the  loose-jointed  piece  of  this  type 
as  he  found  it,  with  "its  scenes  succeeding  each  other  in 
arbitrary  fashion,  like  the  slides  of  a  magic  lantern." 
This  apt  phrase  is  M.  Jusserand's;  and  he  adds  that 
"one  wonders  at  moments  if  the  showman  has  not  mis- 
taken his  slides  and  used  some  of  them  in  the  wrong 
order." 

In  ' Richard  III,'  ' Richard  II'  and  'King  John,'  the 
three  earlier  chronicle-plays  composed  not  long  after  the 
four  earlier  comedies,  Shakspere  accepts  the  method  of 
the  living  picture-book.  He  is  content  to  utilize  the  inse- 
cure framework  of  a  historical  novel  cut  into  dialogue. 
In  preparing  these  plays  he  apparently  accepts  no  obli- 
gation to  relate  the  straggling  episodes  to  a  central  action 
and  to  mold  the  whole  story  into  a  harmonious  whole. 
The  most  that  he  strives  for,  or  at  least,  the  most  that  he 

85 


86  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

attains,  is  the  arbitrary  unity  due  to  a  coercive  central 
character;  and  in  doing  this  he  is  abiding  by  the  example 
of  Marlowe,  whose  influence  upon  him  is  more  obvious  in 
'Richard  III'  and  in  'Richard  II'  than  in  'King  John' 
or  in  any  other  of  his  later  plays.  Perhaps  the  compara- 
tive absence  of  humor  from  these  pieces  is  also  a  result  of 
Marlowe's  example.  The  chronicle-play  inherited  from 
the  mystery  the  habit  of  commingling  comic  scenes  with 
serious  episodes;  Shakspere  had  just  made  four  ventures 
into  comedy,  but  in  these  three  historical  pieces  he  is 
sparing  of  humor.  He  was  later  to  make  up  for  this 
reserve  in  the  two  parts  of  'Henry  IV  which  are  domi- 
nated by  the  exuberant  personality  of  FalstafF. 

"  Shakspere  and  Moliere  wished  above  all  things  to 
make  money  by  their  theaters,"  so  Goethe  once  remarked 
to  Eckermann;  aand  in  order  to  attain  this,  their  prin- 
cipal aim,  they  necessarily  strove  that  everything  should 
be  as  good  as  possible,  and  that,  besides  good  old  pieces, 
there  should  be  some  clever  novelty  to  please  and  to 
attract."  In  the  four  earlier  comedies  Shakspere  had 
aimed  at  the  clever  novelty;  and  in  two  of  the  three 
chronicle-plays  which  immediately  followed  he  goes  back 
to  the  good  old  pieces.  The  old  pieces  that  he  chose  to 
rehandle  might  not  be  very  good,  but  they  had  been  tried 
and  tested  in  the  theater;  and  they  could  be  improved 
by  a  more  careful  utilization  of  the  annals  in  which  their 
authors  had  found  their  material.  In  'Richard  III' 
Shakspere  strengthens  the  story  of  the  old  piece  with 
effects  suggested  to  him  by  a  study  of  Holinshed;  in 
'King  John'  he  condenses  into  a  single  play  an  old  piece 
in  two  parts,  adding  little  of  his  own  so  far  as  incident 
is  concerned,  but  amplifying  salient  characters  out  of 
bare  hints  dropped  by  the  historian;  and  in  'Richard  II' 


HIS  EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS         87 

he  seems  to  have  been  supported  by  no  preceding  play, 
rinding  his  material  directly  in  history  itself,  and  shaping 
it  in  accord  with  the  pattern  set  by  Marlowe  in  'Ed- 
ward 11/ 

John  Stuart  Mill  declared  that  Shakspere,  to  his  con- 
temporaries, is,  first  of  all,  "a  marvelous  story-teller" 
on  the  stage.  By  this  marvelous  gift  of  story-telling  on 
the  stage,  he  can  transmute  the  dull  lead  of  the  annals 
into  the  shining  gold  of  a  chronicle-play,  certain  to  please 
audiences  to  whom  such  formless  pieces  were  still  unfail- 
ingly attractive.  He  casts  out  unhesitatingly  whatever 
the  historic  narrative  may  proffer  which  he  finds  unfit  for 
his  purpose;  he  condenses  the  duration  of  the  action  in 
reckless  disregard  of  historic  accuracy;  he  besprinkles  the 
story  with  all  the  spectacular  effects  possible  on  his 
sceneless  stage;  he  is  liberal  in  combats  and  lavish  in 
chopping  off  heads  to  be  brought  in  dripping  that  they 
may  sate  the  Elizabethan  lust  for  blood;  and  he  is  pro- 
lific in  sheeted  ghosts,  rising  gory-throated  to  thrill  the 
strong-nerved  public  with  its  medieval  relish  for  blood- 
shed. Above  all,  he  brings  to  life  the  old  historic  figures: 
he  vivifies  them  with  the  increasing  energy  of  his  creative 
imagination;  and  often  he  endows  them  with  lofty  elo- 
quence. 

In  Shakspere's  hands  the  chronicle-play  is  contrived  to 
please  all  kinds  of  spectators;  it  is  filled  with  incessant 
movement,  it  abounds  in  vigorous  emotion  and  it  is  popu- 
lated by  sharply  contrasted  characters.  There  is  no  occa- 
sion for  wonder  that  the  Elizabethans  liked  the  chronicle- 
play,  however  lacking  in  dramatic  unity  it  may  seem  to 
us  now.  They  knew  nothing  better,  since  a  true  tragedy 
had  scarcely  been  developed  out  of  it  and  since  a  liberal 
comedy  had  not  yet  been  evolved  by  its  side.     It  gave 


88  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

them  the  kind  of  pleasure  which  they  sought  in  the  play- 
house; and  at  its  best  it  was  better  than  the  even  looser 
and  more  careless  pieces  to  which  they  had  long  been 
accustomed.  It  generally  possessed  that  clash  of  will 
which  the  drama  demands,  even  though  this  collision  was 
sometimes  only  a  historic  controversy. 


II 

Of  all  Shakspere's  chronicle-plays,  *  Richard  III'  has 
had  the  most  undeniable  and  enduring  popularity;  the 
frequency  of  quarto  editions  is  evidence  of  its  persistent 
appeal  to  his  contemporaries;  and  its  constant  reappear- 
ance in  our  theaters  to-day  is  proof  that  its  power  is  still 
potent  over  latter-day  playgoers.  The  reasons  for  this 
abiding  popularity  are  not  far  to  seek.  The  play  may  be 
what  it  has  been  called,  "thoroughly  melodramatic  in 
conception  and  execution";  but  it  is  a  most  moving  melo- 
drama, stiffened  by  the  sinister  figure  of  Richard,  stern  of 
will,  knowing  what  he  wants  and  why  he  wants  it  and 
how  to  get  it — a  type  of  remorseless  depravity  and  of 
ruthless  ambition,  an  inconceivable  monster  of  misdirected 
energy.  Alone  in  the  study  to-day  we  may  dismiss  him 
as  excessive,  as  unconvincing,  as  out  of  nature,  as  a  stage 
villain  daubed  in  harsh  colors;  but  when  we  sit  massed 
in  the  theater  even  now  the  violent  volition  of  this  mon- 
ster still  carries  us  along.  We  may  be  incredulous;  yet 
we  are  swept  forward  in  spite  of  our  repeated  protests 
against  the  absence  of  plausibility  and  against  the  hope- 
lessly primitive  mechanism.  Monstrous  as  Richard  may 
be  when  he  is  considered  as  a  recognizable  human  being, 
he  is  a  splendid  acting  part,  rich  in  striking  possibilities 
for   the   actor  who   is   physically   competent.     The   per- 


HIS   EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS         89 

former  is  not  called  upon  for  the  exercise  of  any  in- 
tellectual subtlety;  he  needs  chiefly  voice  and  intensity; 
and  he  is  sustained  sturdily  by  the  masterful  activity  of 
Richard  himself,  resolute  and  self-reliant,  unhesitating 
and  unscrupulous. 

'Richard  III'  is  a  chronicle-play  which  has  many  of 
the  characteristics  and  much  of  the  theatrical  effective- 
ness of  the  tragedy-of-blood.  It  is  still  a  history,  but  it  is 
almost  a  tragedy  in  the  closer  construction  of  its  plot. 
Ordinarily  a  chronicle-play  has  a  scattered  story  with 
but  little  crescendo  of  action;  the  events  happen  along 
one  after  another,  with  no  unifying  motive.  But  the  suc- 
cessive episodes  of  'Richard  III'  are  knit  together  by 
Queen  Margaret's  comprehensive  curse,  which  is  worked 
out  act  by  act  and  scene  by  scene,  and  which  is  recalled 
in  turn  by  every  victim  of  Richard's  ferocity,  always  fore- 
boding again  the  fate  of  those  it  has  not  yet  overtaken. 
The  curse  itself  is  only  a  clever  piece  of  rhetorical  invec- 
tive, but  it  is  taken  seriously  by  all  the  characters,  and  it 
serves  to  foreshadow  the  impending  doom  of  all  it  has 
included — a  doom  slow  of  execution,  but  ultimately  inex- 
orable. Since  revising  'Titus  Andronicus'  and  the  three 
parts  of  'Henry  VI,'  Shakspere  had  composed  four  come- 
dies, in  two  of  which  he  had  adroitly  articulated  the  skele- 
ton of  plot;  and  possibly  this  experience  prompted  him  to 
give  to  'Richard  III'  a  more  consistent  motive  than  the 
spectators  had  been  accustomed  to  expect  in  a  chronicle- 
play. 

Although  'Richard  III'  marks  an  advance  in  drama- 
turgic dexterity  over  'Henry  VI,'  its  methods  are  still 
primitive.  The  exposition  is  accomplished  by  an  opening 
soliloquy  of  Richard's,  followed  almost  immediately  by 
three  or  four  other  speeches  of  his,  frankly  directed  to  the 


9o  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

spectators,  in  which  he  declares  himself  for  the  villain  he 
is  and  proclaims  his  evil  purposes.  There  is  no  psycho- 
logic veracity  in  these  self-revelatory  soliloquies.  It  is 
inconceivable  that  Richard  should  so  completely  admit  to 
himself  that  he  is  a  villain  and  confess  that  he  is  "subtle, 
false  and  treacherous."  To  make  him  say  this  to  the 
audience  is  to  put  in  his  mouth,  not  any  opinion  that  he 
might  possibly  hold  of  himself,  but  the  opinion  of  every 
outside  commentator  on  his  character.  Yet  primitive  as 
this  device  is  and  contradicting  as  it  does  all  that  we  know 
about  human  self-deception,  it  is  useful  theatrically.  It 
poses  Richard  clearly  before  the  spectators  and  they  can 
have  thereafter  no  doubt  as  to  what  manner  of  man  he 
is.  It  presages  an  interesting  struggle  and  it  excites  ex- 
pectancy; it  sets  before  us  a  bold,  bad  man;  and  it  makes 
us  ask  ourselves  what  he  is  going  to  do  next. 

We  can,  if  we  please,  follow  the  story,  episode  by  epi- 
sode, and  pick  out  scene  after  scene  which  lacks  justifica- 
tion when  tried  by  the  test  of  common  sense.  Yet  none 
of  them  are  out  of  keeping  with  the  tone  that  Shakspere 
deliberately  adopts;  and  they  are  all  of  them  histrionically 
effective.  There  is  little  craft  in  Richard's  sudden 
throwing  over  of  Buckingham,  who  has  just  seated  him 
on  the  throne;  but  it  is  precisely  the  swift  retribution 
which  an  audience  enjoys  when  this  befalls  an  accessory, 
in  anticipation  of  its  also  befalling  the  villain-in-chief. 
There  is  a  total  absence  of  plausibility  in  Richard's  suc- 
cessful wooing  of  Anne  as  she  follows  the  body  of  a  man 
he  has  murdered;  but  the  very  violence  of  the  contrast  is 
startling;  only  the  swiftness  of  Anne's  conversion  is  out 
of  character,  since  her  change  of  heart  is  not  in  itself 
impossible,  if  time  were  but  given  for  it.  Shakspere  is  so 
satisfied  with  the  effect  of  this  scene  that  he  repeats  it  a 


HIS   EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS         91 

little  later,  when  he  shows  Richard  wheedling  Elizabeth 
(who,  like  Anne,  begins  by  cursing  him)  into  wooing  her 
daughter  for  him.  There  is  patent  absurdity  in  Rich- 
ard's calling  on  a  casual  page  to  get  him  a  ready  mur- 
derer; this  is  very  much  as  though  he  were  ringing  up  a 
district-messenger  to  fetch  a  licensed  member  of  the 
assassins'  union;  but  unnatural  as  this  is  in  fact,  it  is 
quite  in  keeping  with  the  rest  of  the  play;  it  is  exactly 
what  the  audience  expects  from  Richard  as  Shakspere 
places  him  before  us  in  this  play.  There  is  the  same  un- 
hesitating use  of  primitive  devices  in  the  procession  of 
eleven  ghosts  on  the  eve  of  Bosworth  Field,  blessing 
Richmond  and  banning  Richard;  but  this  again  bears  on 
the  immediate  issue  of  the  battle,  arousing  the  interest  of 
expectancy  and  evoking  the  suggestion  of  fate. 

The  style  of  the  play  is  curiously  uneven.  Sometimes 
it  is  tedious  with  the  empty  rhetorical  trivialities  the 
Elizabethans  seem  to  have  liked,  full  of  merely  verbal 
quibbles,  and  of  wearisome  turnings  and  twistings  of  the 
same  thought.  Richard's  long  soliloquy  after  his  dream 
of  the  ghosts  is  a  pseudo-logical  argument  wholly  devoid 
of  real  feeling.  The  oration  of  Richard  and  that  of 
Richmond  before  the  battle  are  each  a  variation  of  the 
traditional  address,  rising  now  and  again  into  real  elo- 
quence. The  wailing  of  the  queens  and  of  the  children 
in  the  second  act  is  almost  an  operatic  concerted  piece, 
one  voice  repeating  in  altered  phrases  with  carefully  bal- 
anced antithesis  what  the  preceding  voice  has  uttered;  and 
although  the  sentiment  is  genuine  enough  we  fail  to  catch 
the  accent  of  sincerity.  And  then,  here  and  there,  if  all 
too  infrequently,  there  flash  out  sentences  of  the  true 
Shaksperian  quality,  as  when  Richard  comments  on  a 
reported  remark  of  the  young  king's,  "So  wise  so  young, 


92  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

they  say,  do  never  live  long";  and  when  Richard,  after 
the  reconciliations,  discloses  the  fact  of  Clarence's  death, 
to  the  general  consternation,  and  Buckingham  asks, 
"Look  I  so  pale,  Lord  Dorset,  as  the  rest?" 


Ill 

In  ' Richard  III'  the  action  is  mainly  external;  it 
scarcely  even  hints  at  the  true  tragedy  which  lies  hidden 
in  the  soul  of  man.  It  is  a  rushing  tumult  of  incessant 
assassinations,  dominated  by  a  monster  of  iniquity,  and 
we  sit  silent  as  he  wades  through  blood  to  the  throne. 
In  'Richard  II'  the  spirit  of  the  scene  changes,  although 
we  are  made  again  to  follow  the  rise  of  a  usurper. 
'Richard  II'  is  defective  in  the  very  qualities  in  which 
'Richard  III'  abounds;  and  it  is  endowed  with  the  very 
qualities  which  'Richard  III'  is  without.  That  is  to  say, 
'Richard  II'  is  rich  in  truthful  character-delineation  and 
it  is  poor  not  only  in  theatrical  effect,  but  in  essential 
dramatic  force.  Richard  III  is  energetic  and  strong- 
willed  and  Richard  II  is  yielding  and  weak-willed;  and 
as  a  result  the  former  is  a  fit  figure  for  a  play,  while  the 
latter  is  an  impossible  hero  for  the  drama  which  can 
interest  only  when  it  sets  before  us  the  contention  of 
wilful  personalities. 

'Richard  II'  lacks  action;  it  is  barren  in  striking  situ- 
ations; events  merely  happen  and  are  not  brought  about 
by  deliberate  intent.  The  movement  is  sluggish,  and  it  is 
epic  or  even  elegiac  rather  than  dramatic.  Richard  lets 
his  crown  slip  from  his  head  without  making  a  good  fight 
for  it;  and  Bolingbroke,  who  puts  himself  upon  the  throne, 
is  permitted  to  become  king  rather  because  of  the  feeble- 
ness of  Richard  than  because  of  his  own  strength.     The 


HIS   EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS         93 

usurper  succeeds  not  so  much  by  his  own  stern  resolve 
as  by  the  accident  of  circumstance.  In  other  words,  the 
play  as  a  play  is  weakened  by  a  dearth  of  dramatic 
motive,  of  that  naked  assertion  of  the  human  will  which 
is  ever  the  most  potent  force  in  the  theater.  Macready, 
judging  the  play  from  the  actor's  standpoint  (which  is 
always  valuable  when  we  seek  to  weigh  purely  theatric 
merit),  points  out  that  the  piece  has  not  been  able  to 
keep  the  stage  although  often  applauded  in  the  acting.  He 
notes  that  no  one  of  the  characters  does  anything  to  cause 
a  result;  all  seem  floated  along  the  tides  of  circumstance 
and  "nothing  has  its  source  in  premeditation."  And  he 
adds  that  "in  all  the  greater  plays  of  Shakspere  pur- 
pose and  will,  the  general  foundations  of  character,  are 
the  engines  which  set  action  at  work.  In  'Richard  II' 
we  look  for  these  in  vain.  Macbeth,  Othello,  Iago,  Ham- 
let, Richard  III,  both  think  and  do;  but  Richard  II, 
Bolingbroke,  York  and  the  rest,  though  they  talk  so  well, 
do  little  else  than  talk,  nor  can  all  the  charm  of  compo- 
sition redeem,  in  a  dramatic  point  of  view,  the  weakness 
resulting  from  this  accident  in  a  play's  construction." 

There  is  cause  for  wonder  that  immediately  after  com- 
posing a  play  of  compact  theatricality  like  'Richard  III' 
Shakspere  should  be  so  neglectful  of  dramatic  force  in 
'Richard  II,'  repeating  the  mistake  he  had  made  in  the 
ineffective  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona'  immediately  after 
the  artfully  constructed  'Comedy  of  Errors.'  Possibly 
the  explanation  of  the  dramaturgic  weakness  of  'Rich- 
ard II'  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  he  did  not  have  the 
support  of  any  previous  play  to  supply  suggestions  for 
improvement.  Shakspere  seems  to  have  been  sluggish  of 
invention — or  at  least  to  have  exerted  his  ingenuity  most 
easily  when  he  had  an  old  piece  to  better  as  best  he  could. 


94  SHAKSPERE  AS  A   PLAYWRIGHT 

Possibly  it  may  be  that  his  artistic  interest  was  so  cen- 
tered in  the  character  of  Richard  himself  that  he  failed 
to  perceive  the  need  of  a  bold  action  to  display  the  figure 
of  the  pliant  king.  If  this  is  the  case,  he  was  then  doing 
what  Moliere  did  later,  when  the  French  dramatist  al- 
lowed his  overmastering  interest  in  the  Misanthrope  him- 
self to  blind  him  to  the  insufficiency  of  the  dramatic 
story  in  which  Alceste  was  the  central  character.  Yet 
the  'Misanthrope'  might  have  been  supplied  with  a  dra- 
matic structure  as  powerful  as  that  of  'Tartuffe,'  since 
Alceste  himself  is  a  strong-willed  character,  whereas  the 
task  of  finding  a  truly  dramatic  framework  to  set  off  the 
slack-minded  Richard  II  is  almost  hopeless.  And  thus 
we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that  Shakspere's  initial  error 
was  in  choosing  a  theme  incapable  of  truly  dramatic 
treatment.  This  is  added  evidence  of  the  truth  of  Vol- 
taire's remark  that  the  success  of  a  tragedy  depends,  first 
of  all,  upon  the  choice  of  its  subject. 

While  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  central  figure  of  this 
tragic  history  is  fundamentally  undramatic,  and  that  the 
story  of  his  fall  is  but  sparsely  supplied  with  stirring  situ- 
ations, Shakspere  is  ever  Shakspere;  and  there  is  no  play 
of  his  which  has  not  its  superb  moments.  Quite  in  keep- 
ing with  the  king's  irresolute  character  is  the  sudden  rage 
which  fires  him  to  slay  with  his  own  hand  two  of  the 
men  who  have  come  to  murder  him.  And  in  the  earlier 
episode  of  his  yielding  up  the  crown,  there  is  both  psy- 
chologic truth  and  theatrical  effect  when  he  sends  for  a 
mirror  to  see  "the  face  that  like  the  sun  did  make  behold- 
ers wink,"  only  to  dash  the  glass  to  the  ground,  thereby 
showing  Bolingbroke  that  his  glory  is  as  brittle  as  the  face 
reflected  in  the  mirror.  Perhaps  it  may  be  worth  recall- 
ing that,  in  a  poetic  drama  by  M.  Rostand,  'L'Aiglon,' 


HIS   EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS         95 

another  royal  weakling,  too  infirm  of  purpose  for  the  bur- 
den that  is  laid  upon  his  shoulders,  also  looks  at  his  face 
in  a  mirror,  only  to  shatter  the  glass  in  disgust. 

When  the  weakness  of  '  Richard  II'  as  a  play  is  once 
admitted,  only  praise  can  be  bestowed  upon  the  char- 
acter-delineation, especially  upon  the  wonderful  felicity 
with  which  the  peculiar  personality  of  Richard  is  por- 
trayed. Shakspere  here  discloses  a  psychologic  insight  of 
which  he  had  given  little  evidence  in  any  earlier  piece. 
The  truthfulness  with  which  Richard  II  is  depicted  is  in 
marked  contrast  with  the  lack  of  truth  in  the  painting  of 
Richard  III.  Shakspere  seems  to  have  been  attracted  by 
the  problem  of  presenting  a  king  who  should  be  kingly  and 
yet  devoid  of  the  attributes  of  a  real  ruler.  Richard  II 
is  an  unusual  character  drawn  with  unusual  art.  He  is  a 
specialist  in  self-pity,  a  dilettant  in  self-torture,  reveling 
in  the  luxury  of  woe  and  seeking  his  happiness  in  being 
unhappy.  He  is  unceasing  in  dissecting  his  own  sad 
plight  and  in  moralizing  upon  his  own  misery.  At  bot- 
tom he  is  a  contemptible  creature,  delineated  with  a  per- 
fect understanding  of  his  morbid  individuality.  He  is 
cruel  and  grasping  and  heartless;  and  yet  he  is  exuber- 
ant in  sympathy  for  himself.  He  is  the  embodiment  of 
pathetic  helplessness,  a  masterpiece  of  psychologic  ve- 
racity. And  it  is  in  the  play  in  which  he  appears  that 
it  is  possible  to  perceive,  for  the  first  time,  that  wonderful 
understanding  of  human  nature  which  was  to  make 
Shakspere  the  greatest  of  dramatists. 


96  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


IV 

In  'King  John'  Shakspere  appropriates  an  old  play  in 
two  parts  and  condenses  it,  without  taking  pains  to  make 
the  story  coherent  or  compact.  In  speech  and  in  char- 
acter he  betters  what  he  borrows;  as  M.  Jusserand  has 
suggested,  "it  is  a  case  of  the  eagle  donning  the  jackdaw's 
feathers."  With  these  feathers  he  is  content  to  skim  close 
to  the  ground  and  not  to  soar  aloft  on  his  own  strong 
pinions.  The  piece  is  a  mere  medley  of  scarcely  related 
scenes,  following  each  other  almost  in  confusion,  some- 
times powerful  in  themselves,  but  even  then  less  potent 
than  they  might  be  if  they  were  properly  coordinated  and 
firmly  knit  together.  There  is  nothing  to  rivet  the  atten- 
tion of  the  spectators  except  contrasted  characters  and 
abundant  eloquence;  and  in  a  play  these  are  inadequate 
substitutes  for  a  controlling  motive  or  for  a  dominating 
figure.  As  Aristotle  had  asserted  many  centuries  earlier, 
"if  you  string  together  a  set  of  speeches  expressive  of 
character,  and  well  finished  in  point  of  diction  and 
thought,  you  will  not  produce  the  essential  tragic  effect 
nearly  as  well  as  with  a  play,  which,  however  deficient  in 
these  respects,  yet  has  a  plot  and  artistically  constructed 
incidents." 

Plot  and  artistically  constructed  incidents  had  been 
lacking  in  most  of  the  chronicle-plays  which  Shakspere 
was  following;  and  yet  these  earlier  pieces  had  often  a 
forward  movement  absent  from  'King  John,'  because 
Shakspere  fails  to  provide  any  single  character  to  focus 
our  interest.  A  chronicle-play  it  is,  with  all  the  loose- 
ness of  that  easy  form;  but  a  chronicle-play  is  only  a 
kaleidoscope  of  battle,  murder  and  sudden  death  unless 


HIS   EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS         97 

it  has  a  central  figure,  like  Richard  III  or  Henry  V, 
to  compel  our  interest.  In  'King  John'  the  action  is 
wandering  and  uncertain;  it  is  even  more  fragmentary 
than  that  of  'Richard  II';  and  it  is  wholly  without  the 
huddled  swiftness  of  'Richard  III.'  Furthermore,  King 
John  himself,  although  not  so  absolutely  unfit  to  be  the 
leading  personage  of  a  play  as  Richard  II,  is  not  so  pre- 
sented as  to  grip  our  sympathy;  and  Faulconbridge,  the 
valiant  braggart,  who  is  set  before  us  with  assured  mas- 
tery, is  external  to  the  story,  such  as  it  is. 

The  opening  scenes  cheat  us  with  the  belief  that  Faul- 
conbridge  is  to  take  a  prominent  place  in  the  plot,  and  we 
are  disappointed  when  we  find  that  this  is  impossible, 
since  he  is  only  an  outsider,  involved  in  no  important 
situation  and  useful  at  best  only  to  give  color  to  certain 
scenes  and  to  comment  upon  the  events  like  a  chorus. 
Faulconbridge  is  a  largely  conceived  character  with  Shak- 
spere's  unfailing  appreciation  of  a  free  and  unconven- 
tional nature;  and  Shakspere  lends  him  wit,  shrewdness 
and  even  eloquence;  yet  his  best  bravura  passages  have 
but  little  dramatic  value,  since  he  is  not  firmly  tied  into 
the  action.  He  exists  for  his  own  sake — for  the  sake  of 
the  vivacity  and  the  variety  his  presence  imparts  to  the 
scenes  in  which  he  appears.  He  is  a  pleasant  fellow  of  an 
easy  and  contagious  mirth;  he  has  a  captivating  humor 
of  his  own,  forecasting  that  of  Mercutio;  but  his  part  is 
so  loosely  related  to  the  action  that  he  cannot  be  forced 
into  prominence. 

'King  John'  is  curiously  incongruous  in  the  carelessness 
of  its  composition.  It  is  in  the  main  a  drum-and-trum- 
pet  history,  with  the  flourishes  of  heralds,  the  challenges 
to  instant  battle  and  the  sudden  settling  of  a  war  by 
the  unexpected  betrothal  of  a  prince  and  a  princess  who 


98  SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

have  never  before  met — a  betrothal  impertinently  pro- 
posed by  a  private  citizen  and  incontinently  accepted  by 
the  warring  kings.  Then  the  fight  breaks  out  again,  when 
the  Cardinal  most  unexpectedly  intervenes;  the  French 
invade  England  with  the  aid  of  the  English  nobles,  who 
suddenly  turn  against  them  when  they  are  told  that  the 
Dauphin  has  inexplicably  planned  their  needless  assassina- 
tion. The  death  of  King  John  by  poison  is  casual;  it  has 
not  been  prepared  for  by  the  dramatist,  and  it  is  there- 
fore feeble  in  dramatic  effect. 

The  railings  and  the  ravings  of  Queen  Elinor  and 
Queen  Constance  are  unseemly;  they  are  unqueenly,  if 
not  unwomanly.  At  times,  these  two  widows  of  dead 
kings  are  little  better  than  a  couple  of  common  scolds, 
with  an  unbridled  license  of  speech  that  even  Queen  Eliz- 
abeth might  have  thought  excessive.  Of  the  two,  Con- 
stance is  the  more  violent,  as  she  has  good  reason  to  be; 
her  later  outbreaks  are  hysteric,  even  if  they  are  the  result 
of  maternal  devotion.  She  is  superb  in  mother-love  and 
eloquent  in  high-sounding  words;  but  her  temper  is  pain- 
fully shrewish  and  she  revels  in  her  opportunities  for 
vehement  protest.  Her  violence  therefore  detracts  not 
a  little  from  the  pathos  of  her  plight,  and  even  from  the 
appeal  of  her  heartfelt  plaints.  Overdone  as  they  seem 
to  us  now,  her  swelling  invectives,  excited  by  a  natural 
emotion,  must  have  been  grateful  to  the  boy-actor  in- 
trusted with  the  part  (possibly  the  same  youthful  per- 
former who  was  soon  to  be  intrusted  with  Katherine  in 
the  *  Taming  of  the  Shrew'). 

The  characters,  however  overdrawn  they  may  be  and 
however  external  to  the  action,  in  so  far  as  there  is  any 
action,  are  admirably  depicted.  They  are  living  men  and 
women;   they   are   no  longer  merely   parts,   sketched   in 


HIS   EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS         99 

outline,  to  be  colored  by  the  personality  of  the  performer; 
they  are  truly  characters,  standing  on  their  own  feet  and 
speaking  out  of  their  own  mouths.  The  gift  of  endowing 
his  creations  with  life  itself,  of  which  Shakspere  gave 
little  sign  in  his  earliest  plays,  is  now  at  last  displayed. 
Equally  undeniable  is  his  gift  of  handling  a  pathetic  situ- 
ation with  a  full  understanding  of  its  possibilities.  Noth- 
ing that  he  had  done  in  any  earlier  piece  foretold  the 
psychologic  subtlety  of  the  scene  in  which  King  John 
suggests  to  Hubert  the  murder  of  Arthur  or  the  com- 
passionate handling  of  the  scene  in  which  Hubert  under- 
takes to  put  out  Arthur's  eyes  and  is  overcome  by  the 
little  prince's  irresistibly  moving  plea  for  mercy.  And 
yet  note  must  be  made  of  the  fact  that  in  Shakspere's 
play  the  project  of  putting  out  Arthur's  eyes  is  wholly 
gratuitous;  what  King  John  wanted  and  what  Hubert 
had  undertaken  to  do  was  to  make  away  with  Arthur; 
and  there  was  no  possible  excuse  for  blinding  him  before 
killing  him.  Shakspere  is  amplifying  a  hint  he  found  in 
the  old  play,  but  he  carelessly  omits  the  passage  in  the 
old  play  which  justified  the  scene.  Probably  the  episode 
took  shape  as  it  did  partly  because  of  the  well-known 
delight  the  Elizabethan  playgoers  had  in  beholding 
ghastly  spectacles  of  mutilation  and  torture — a  violent 
delight  which  Shakspere  again  procured  them  by  the 
plucking  out  of  Gloucester's  eyes  in  the  later  'King  Lear.' 


It  is  as  poet  and  as  psychologist,  as  a  writer  of  soaring 
speeches  and  of  pathetic  phrases,  and  as  a  creator  of  living 
characters  that  Shakspere  in  these  three  early  chronicle- 
histories  proves  that  he  has  outgrown  the  writer  of  the 


ioo        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

four  early  comedies.  It  is  not  as  a  playwright  that  he 
has  improved,  since  we  cannot  help  admitting  his  failure 
to  give  to  these  histories  the  straightforward  movement  of 
which  the  chronicle-play  was  capable.  Even  though  he 
has  advanced  as  a  poet,  he  has  not  yet  discovered  the  full 
value  of  blank  verse  and  its  superiority  over  rime  as  an 
instrument  for  dramatic  utterance.  In  all  three  of  these 
pieces  rime  is  not  infrequent;  now  and  again  it  is  even 
abundant.  We  find  it  generally  in  couplets,  but  occa- 
sionally even  in  quatrains;  and  we  find  it  where  it  is  not 
helpful,  in  scenes  wherein  there  is  really  no  lyric  note  to 
which  rime  might  be  more  or  less  appropriate. 

We  note  also  that,  although  Shakspere  can  now  breathe 
the  breath  of  life  into  his  creatures,  he  has  failed  to  pro- 
vide any  one  of  these  three  plays  with  a  broadly  humorous 
character  or  with  scenes  of  rollicking  fun,  such  as  were 
common  enough  in  the  chronicle-plays  of  his  predecessors. 
Richard  III  has  a  sardonic  humor  of  his  own;  but  it  is 
not  laughter  that  he  arouses  in  us.  Faulconbridge  is 
pleasantly  gay  in  manner  and  playfully  lively  in  speech; 
but  he  is  only  a  clever  commentator,  ready  with  satiric 
remarks  upon  the  shifting  spectacle  of  life  as  it  passes 
before  his  eyes;  and  he  is  not  entangled  in  any  amusing 
situation  of  his  own,  out  of  which  he  might  be  extricated 
by  his  ready  wit.  This  absence  of  humor,  of  hearty  comic 
character  and  of  episodes  funny  in  themselves  must  be 
regarded  as  not  a  little  curious,  since  Shakspere  was  soon 
to  return  to  the  chronicle-play  with  the  two  parts  of 
'Henry  IV  filled  by  the  huge  bulk  of  the  incomparable 
FalstafT,  and  with  'Henry  V,'  wherein  he  provided  a 
varied  group  of  comic  characters. 

Shakspere  was  still  in  the  period  of  youthful  experi- 
mentation and  he  had  not  yet  discovered  how  to  make 


HIS   EARLIEST  CHRONICLE-PLAYS       101 

the  most  of  his  material.  In  two  of  his  earlier  comedies 
he  had  proved  that  he  could  already  construct  a  coherent 
plot  and  in  two  of  these  earlier  chronicle-plays  he  has 
shown  that  he  could  already  draw  characters  of  an  indis- 
putable humanity.  But  he  was  as  yet  modestly  uncon- 
scious of  his  own  ability  to  compose  a  well-built  play 
which  should  also  be  carried  on  by  characters  of  immiti- 
gable truth  to  life.  Apparently  his  full  ambition  had  not 
yet  waked.  Certainly  there  is  little  in  the  four  comedies 
already  considered  or  in  these  three  chronicle-plays  which 
foretold  the  sudden  and  superb  outflowering  of  his  genius 
in  'Romeo  and  Juliet.'  Of  course,  the  exact  sequence  in 
which  he  composed  his  plays  is  not  yet  definitely  ascer- 
tained; and  quite  possibly  the  order  in  which  they  have 
here  been  considered  is  not  beyond  cavil.  And  yet  the 
more  carefully  we  consider  Shakspere's  dramaturgic  work- 
manship, his  slow  acquisition  of  the  craft  of  playmaking, 
the  more  assurance  can  we  feel  that  the  four  comedies 
and  these  three  chronicle-plays  preceded  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet'  and  were  the  preparation  for  it. 


CHAPTER  VI 

'ROMEO  AND  JULIET 

The  earliest  of  Shakspere's  indisputable  masterpieces 
is  'Romeo  and  Juliet.'  It  is,  as  M.  Jusserand  observes, 
"the  first  work  in  which  the  dramatist  fully  reveals  him- 
self— the  tragic,  the  comic,  the  tender,  the  jocose,  the 
marvelous,  the  incomparable  poet.,,  No  one  of  the  plays 
which  preceded  it  gave  promise  of  his  ultimate  supremacy 
in  tragedy;  and  only  two  of  them,  the  'Midsummer 
Night's  Dream'  and  'Richard  III,'  each  in  its  own  way, 
really  contributed  to  his  lasting  reputation.  'Romeo  and 
Juliet'  is  the  first  of  his  plays  to  withstand  completely  the 
double  test  of  the  stage  and  the  study,  established  firmly 
in  the  theater  and  held  in  highest  esteem  in  the  library. 
It  is  seen  frequently  in  our  playhouses  to-day  and  always 
to  the  delight  of  the  main  body  of  the  playgoing  public; 
and  it  is  read  by  countless  thousands  who  rarely  enter  the 
doors  of  a  theater  and  who  do  not  think  of  it  as  a  play 
to  be  acted  but  rather  as  the  undying  poem  of  young 
love  in  the  springtime  of  life.  It  is  perhaps  the  play  of 
Shakspere's  which  is  best  known,  or  at  least  most  widely 
known,  outside  of  the  confines  of  the  English  language; 
that  is  to  say,  it  was  the  earliest  of  his  tragedies  to  attain 
cosmopolitan  fame. 

It  is  not  the  loftiest  or  the  mightiest  effort  of  his  tragic 
genius;  but  it  is  the  most  universal  in  the  wide  appeal  of 
its  pathetic  story.  It  is  the  eternal  tale  of  youthful  love 
rushing  to  its  fate,  a  tale  fiery  with  passion  and  yet  chilly 


I02 


'  ROMEO  AND  JULIET  103 

with  the  sense  of  impending  doom.  It  is  at  once  epic  in 
its  sweep,  lyric  in  its  fervor  and  dramatic  in  its  intensity, 
with  a  pervading  note  of  romance  not  surpassed  in  any 
of  his  later  and  greater  tragedies.  As  Coleridge  declared, 
"it  is  a  spring  day,  gusty  and  beautiful  in  the  morn,  and 
closing  like  an  April  evening  with  the  song  of  the  night- 
mgale. 

The  popularity  of  ' Romeo  and  Juliet'  with  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  and  in  all  parts  of  the  modern  world 
is  evidence  that  in  its  composition  the  poet  and  the  play- 
wright worked  in  loyal  collaboration.  Sometimes  Shak- 
spere  is  happy-go-lucky  in  his  plotting,  as  in  'King  John'; 
and  sometimes  when  he  has  put  his  structure  together 
with  cautious  skill,  as  in  the  'Comedy  of  Errors,'  he  is 
willing  to  rely  mainly  on  the  plot  for  the  interest  of  his 
play.  He  does  his  best  as  poet  and  as  playwright  both 
only  when  his  heart  is  in  his  work  and  when  his  interest 
is  deeply  aroused  by  his  theme.  Indeed,  his  effort  seems 
to  be  in  proportion  to  the  attraction  exerted  on  him  by 
the  subject  he  is  at  work  on.  He  is  often  casual  and 
careless  in  his  choice  of  material,  apparently  taking  what- 
ever chances  to  be  nearest  at  hand  and  descending  to 
stories  as  unworthy  of  his  genius  as  those  which  he  bor- 
rowed later  as  the  basis  of  'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well' 
and  'Measure  for  Measure.'  When  the  material  he  has 
accepted  is  not  really  worth  while  (as  in  these  two  so- 
called  comedies),  his  artistic  endeavor  is  relaxed  and  he 
fails  to  exert  his  full  energy;  he  does  what  he  has  to 
do  in  the  easiest  way,  moving  along  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance and  letting  the  unfortunate  story  construct  itself 
as  best  it  can. 

It  is  only  those  pieces  wherein  he  discovers  a  topic 
really  stimulating  to  his  imagination  that  demand  his  ut- 


104        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

most  endeavor;  and  it  is  only  in  such  pieces  that  he  is 
nerved  to  put  forth  his  whole  strength  both  as  play- 
wright and  as  poet.  There  are  only  half  a  dozen  or 
half  a  score  of  these  plays  in  which  we  can  perceive  the 
working  of  all  his  powers  at  their  fullest  possibilities;  and 
in  them  alone  do  we  see  him  taking  the  utmost  pains, 
toiling  over  his  technic,  setting  his  characters  firmly  on 
their  feet,  and  endowing  them  with  exuberant  vitality. 
When  he  is  intensely  interested  in  the  theme  of  a  play, 
tragic  or  comic,  his  energy  kindles  and  he  spares  no  trouble 
to  present  the  story  to  most  complete  advantage  and  to 
get  out  of  it  all  that  can  be  expressed  from  it.  He 
lingers  lovingly  over  the  always  difficult  problems  of 
construction,  spending  himself  freely  on  exposition  and 
contrast  and  climax,  and  achieving  a  deeper  meaning  as 
a  reward  for  his  artistic  conscientiousness. 

That  he  should  have  attained  an  elevated  standard 
on  these  occasions  is  more  remarkable  than  that  he  should 
more  often  have  fallen  below  it.  Plays  were  then  in- 
tended solely  for  the  two  hours'  traffic  of  the  stage;  they 
were  held  up  to  the  mark  by  no  pressure  of  competent 
criticism;  they  could  expect  no  supporting  praise  other 
than  the  plaudits  of  the  theater.  Shakspere  had  before 
him  when  he  composed  ' Romeo  and  Juliet'  no  model  of 
tragedy  to  arouse  his  ambition  to  rivalry,  and  no  com- 
petitor pressing  close  at  his  heels.  To  the  Elizabethan 
playwright  the  stimulus  to  attain  the  highest  plane  of 
purely  artistic  excellence  was  never  external;  it  had  to 
be  internal,  within  himself;  it  had  to  be  aroused  by  his 
own  interest  in  the  alluring  subject  which  had  then 
captivated  his  ardent  attention.  When  Shakspere  has 
such  a  subject,  as  he  had  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  he  works 
as  one  inspired,  for  his  own  sake,  for  his  own  delight  in 


'ROMEO  AND  JULIET'  105 

his  sheer  artistry,  for  the  joy  of  the  deed  itself;  and  he 
achieves  a  technical  beauty,  a  balanced  proportion,  a  mas- 
terly structure,  a  massive  movement,  irresistible  and  in- 
evitable, and  a  perfect  harmony  of  the  whole,  such  as  can 
be  matched  only  in  the  major  plays  of  Sophocles  and 
Moliere. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  he  builded  better  than  he  knew, 
and  that  he  did  not  suspect  the  full  value  of  what  he  was 
doing.  He  may  not  have  been  conscious  that  in  'Romeo 
and  Juliet'  he  was  creating  the  earliest  model  of  English 
tragedy.  He  may  have  supposed  that  he  was  only 
putting  on  the  stage  in  the  fashion  most  likely  to  inter- 
est an  Elizabethan  audience,  an  Italian  tale  which  had 
interested  him.  He  may  have  intended  only  to  pre- 
pare a  novel  in  action  and  in  dialogue,  such  as  other  play- 
wrights were  producing  about  that  time.  None  the  less 
he  was  able  to  give  it  a  unity  which  no  other  playwright 
had  striven  for.  Thereby  he  achieved  a  tragedy  which, 
however  different  in  its  method  from  that  of  the  Greeks, 
was  in  essential  accord  with  the  requirements  of  Aristotle. 
"Tragedy,"  as  the  great  Greek  critic  defined  it,  "is  the 
imitation  of  an  action  that  is  serious,  complete  and  of  a 
certain  magnitude";  having  a  beginning,  a  middle  and 
an  end;  "being  in  the  form  of  action,  not  of  narrative; 
through  pity  and  fear  effecting  the  proper  purgation  of 
the  emotions." 

The  action  of  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  is  action  and  not 
narrative;  it  is  serious  and  of  a  certain  magnitude;  it  is 
complete,  having  a  beginning,  a  middle  and  an  end;  and 
through  pity  and  fear  it  effects  the  proper  purgation  of 
the  emotions.  We  may  go  further  and  insist  that  it 
has  also  the  unity  which  Aristotle  demanded  from  Greek 
tragedy — not    the    pseudo-unities    of   Time    and    Place, 


106         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

which  the  Italian  critics  had  falsely  deduced  from  their 
misreading  of  Aristotle's  treatise,  but  that  unity  of  Action, 
of  story,  which  is  imperative  in  all  the  arts.  And  this 
tragedy  of  Shakspere's  has  also  the  equally  important 
unity  of  tone  which  characterizes  the  greatest  of  Greek 
plays;  all  its  episodes  and  all  its  figures  are  in  unison  with 
its  theme;  they  are  all  coherent  and  consistent;  they  all 
serve  to  elucidate  and  to  illuminate. 


II 

The  certainty  of  Aristotle's  insight  into  the  essential 
precepts  of  playmaking,  eternal  through  the  long  cen- 
turies, the  same  to-day  as  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth  and  in 
the  more  distant  days  of  Pericles,  is  revealed  again  in  his 
declaration  of  the  superior  importance  of  construction  in 
a  tragedy  over  character  delineation  and  poetic  embellish- 
ment. "The  plot,  then,  is  the  first  principle,  and,  as  it 
were,  the  soul  of  tragedy;  character  holds  the  second 
place."  This  is  one  of  his  wise  sayings,  and  here  is  an- 
other: "Novices  in  the  art  are  able  to  elaborate  their  dic- 
tion and  ethical  portraiture  before  they  can  frame  their 
incidents;  it  is  the  same  with  all  early  poets."  There  is 
no  lack  of  diction,  of  ethical  portraiture,  of  character  in 
'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  but  these  are  made  effective  by  the 
framing  of  the  incidents  into  a  plot  which  would  rivet 
the  attention  of  the  spectators  even  if  the  dialogue  were 
but  fustian  and  the  characters  but  puppets. 

Shakspere  finds  the  story  complete  in  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet,'  a  tedious  poem  in  long-drawn  and  lumbering  lines, 
by  one  Arthur  Brooke,  who  had  refashioned  a  French 
elaboration  of  an  earlier  Italian  tale.  The  base  metal  of 
Brooke's  rimed  narrative  Shakspere  transmutes  into  the 


' ROMEO  AND  JULIET'  107 

pure  gold  of  his  immortal  tragedy  by  means  of  an  endless 
succession  of  modifications  of  all  sorts — condensations, 
suppressions,  transpositions  and  amplifications — all  dis- 
playing an  unerring  feeling  for  dramatic  effect.  The  whole 
story  is  in  Brooke's  poem,  hidden  beneath  tawdry  rhet- 
oric and  trivial  verbiage,  but  the  keen  eye  of  a  born  play- 
wright was  needed  to  perceive  the  theatrical  possibilities 
of  the  action  inchoate  in  the  pedestrian  verse  of  Brooke. 
There  could  scarcely  be  found  a  more  instructive  study  in 
the  art  of  playmaking  than  the  consideration  of  the  rea- 
sons for  the  manifold  changes  which  Shakspere  makes  in 
the  material  that  he  borrows  wholesale.  He  clarifies  the 
action  by  simplifying  it.  He  heightens  it  by  hastening 
its  movement.  He  compresses  it  into  a  very  few  days, 
instead  of  letting  it  linger  along  for  several  months.  He 
imparts  to  it  a  breathless  speed,  which  rolls  it  irresistible 
to  its  inevitable  culmination.  He  arranges  the  sequence 
of  events,  building  up  the  successive  situations  so  that 
each  of  them  seems  to  grow  naturally  out  of  the  one  that 
went  before  and  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  one  that 
comes  after.  He  eschews  narrative  altogether  and  lets 
the  spectators  see  for  themselves  everything  which  they 
need  to  know.  He  brings  all  the  characters  early  on  the 
stage,  so  that  we  recognize  them  when  they  reappear  later 
as  the  stress  of  emotion  gets  tenser  and  tenser. 

When  we  compare  the  masterly  plot  of  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet'  with  the  fragmentary  construction  of  the  serious 
plays  which  had  preceded  it,  we  may  be  moved  to  wonder 
at  the  sudden  development  of  Shakspere's  structural  skill. 
The  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  he  had 
exhibited  the  same  kind  of  skill  in  two  of  his  comedies. 
The  principles  of  playmaking  are  the  same  in  comedy 
and  in  tragedy,  however  different  the  ultimate  effect  may 


108         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

be.  Shakspere  had  practised  his  hand  in  weaving  the  in- 
tricate imbroglio  of  the  'Comedy  of  Errors'  and  in  com- 
bining the  fantastic  misadventures  of  the  'Midsummer 
Night's  Dream';  and  these  experiences  in  the  construc- 
tion of  comedy  stood  him  in  stead  when  he  worked  out 
the  crescendo  of  tragic  situations  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet.' 
The  results  are  as  unlike  as  may  be,  but  the  method  is 
identical;  and  admirable  as  is  the  mechanism  of  this  first 
great  tragedy,  it  is  not  better  in  its  kind  than  the  ma- 
chinery which  functions  so  felicitously  in  the  'Comedy  of 
Errors.'  Of  course,  there  is  not  only  the  wide  difference 
between  tragedy  and  comedy,  there  is  also  the  more 
important  divergence  due  to  the  fact  that  the  early  farce 
has  little  or  no  other  merit  than  the  deft  ingenuity  of  its 
plot,  whereas  the  tragedy  is  dowered  with  poetry  no  less 
than  with  psychology,  and  its  lovely  story  moves  forward 
so  smoothly  that  its  artful  mechanism  is  unsuspected 
until  we  set  ourselves  deliberately  to  spy  out  its  secrets. 
Shakspere  reveals  here  a  constructive  skill,  surpassing 
anything  yet  seen  on  the  English  stage,  a  dramaturgic 
dexterity  he  was  to  employ  again  later  in  a  scant  half- 
dozen  of  his  succeeding  tragedies.  He  is  here  dealing 
with  one  theme  only,  large  enough  to  sustain  a  whole 
play  without  admixture  of  any  subplot;  and  he  is  sat- 
isfied with  his  single  story.  He  sees  the  full  value  of  it, 
and  he  so  handles  it  as  to  get  out  of  it  all  possible  effect. 
He  knows  exactly  what  he  means  to  do  and  he  does  it, 
without  hesitation  or  uncertainty.  He  neglects  none  of 
the  episodes  that  must  be  shown  to  the  spectators,  the 
scenes  a  faire,  as  Sarcey  called  them,  setting  forth  the 
collision  of  opposing  volitions,  and  decisive  of  the  result — 
those,  therefore,  that  an  audience  vaguely  expects,  being 
dumbly   disappointed  when   it   fails   to   find   them.     He 


'  ROMEO  AND  JULIET  109 

starts  no  false  clues  and  he  wastes  no  time  in  by-paths. 
He  puts  in  no  scene  which  can  be  spared  and  he  omits  no 
scene  which  is  integral  to  the  plot.  He  avoids  all  im- 
probability, making  clear  the  motive  for  every  deed  and 
every  speech  and  making  sure  that  this  motive  is  not 
only  plausible  but  immediately  acceptable  without  cavil 
or  even  consideration.  All  the  characters  move  forward 
naturally,  obeying  the  law  of  their  own  being,  saying  and 
doing  exactly  what  they  would  naturally  say  and  do. 
Every  episode  is  tense  with  increasing  suspense;  and  no 
episode  is  marred  by  the  disconcerting  shock  of  mere 
surprise. 

No  part  of  the  play  demands  higher  praise  for  its  stage- 
craft than  the  exposition,  the  scene  in  which  we  are 
taken  with  swift  certainty  into  the  center  of  the  story. 
Shakspere  can  be,  when  he  chooses,  a  master  of  exposi- 
tion, as  he  was  to  prove  in  ' Hamlet, '  ' Othello'  and  'Mac- 
beth'; but  effectively  as  those  plays  begin  and  skilfully 
as  the  attention  of  the  spectators  is  caught  almost  with 
the  opening  words,  no  one  of  them  surpasses  'Romeo  and 
Juliet'  in  this  respect.  That  the  devoted  lovers  shall  fall 
in  love  at  first  sight  under  the  shadow  of  impending  doom, 
we  need  to  know  about  the  long-standing  feud  of  the 
Capulets  and  the  Montagues  before  Juliet  and  Romeo 
first  lay  eyes  on  each  other.  We  do  not  need  to  know  the 
origin  of  the  quarrel,  and  this  Shakspere  does  not  trouble 
to  declare.  But  we  are  made  to  behold  the  feud  flaming 
up  again  out  of  its  ashes,  almost  without  an  exciting  cause 
and  only  in  consequence  of  the  predisposition  of  both  sides 
to  immediate  conflagration. 

Two  serving-men  of  the  Montagues,  none  too  valiant, 
happen  upon  two  serving-men  of  the  Capulets,  and  bandy 
words  with  them.     Encouraged  by  the  arrival  of  Ben- 


no         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

volio,  they  go  a  little  too  far;  and  Benvolio  is  striving  to 
allay  their  strife  when  the  fiery  Tybalt  bursts  in  to  chal- 
lenge the  calm-blooded  Benvolio.  With  the  rumor  of  the 
fighting,  the  officers  of  the  law  appear.  Then  the  elder 
Capulet  and  the  elder  Montague  rush  out  eager  to  attack 
each  other.  And  when  the  broil  is  at  its  height  the 
Prince  comes  on  sternly  to  command  an  instant  cessation 
of  hostilities.  In  his  reproof  to  the  warring  chiefs  the 
Prince  puts  the  spectators  in  possession  of  all  the  facts 
of  the  case,  the  long-standing  hostility  of  the  two  families, 
the  frequent  faction-fights,  and  the  severe  penalty  for  any 
future  breaking  of  the  peace. 

Ill 

Our  interest  in  a  play  when  we  see  it  presented  in  the 
theater  is  almost  in  proportion  to  the  sharpness  of  the 
struggle  which  animates  the  story.  To  this  sharpness  is 
due  the  ease  with  which  we  can  apprehend  this  conflict, 
and  the  sympathy  thereby  aroused,  leading  us  to  take 
sides  with  one  or  the  other  of  the  combatants.  In  '  Romeo 
and  Juliet'  hero  and  heroine  alike,  and  to  an  equal  degree, 
have  wills  of  their  own  and  know  their  own  minds  and 
are  bent  on  having  their  own  way.  They  are  not  only 
wilful,  but  headstrong,  and  so  they  rush  straight  to  their 
doom.  By  their  implacable  purpose  they  sustain  the 
action  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  Nor  are  hero  and 
heroine  alone  in  this  characteristic.  Capulet  is  a  mas- 
terful man,  insistent  in  coercion;  he  is  the  fit  father  for 
Juliet,  and  she  is  truly  his  daughter.  Tybalt  is  equally 
impetuous  in  asserting  himself,  volcanic  and  irreconcil- 
able. The  Prince  is  firm  in  resolve  and  prompt  in  action. 
Even  Friar  Lawrence  is   unhesitating   in   the  successive 


' ROMEO  AND  JULIET'  in 

steps  he  takes  in  aid  of  the  ill-starred  lovers.  Almost 
every  character  in  the  play  is  forthputting  and  intolerant 
of  opposition,  determined  to  do  what  he  has  decided,  re- 
gardless of  the  consequences  to  others  or  to  himself. 

The  characters  are  not  only  boldly  individual,  they  are 
also  boldly  contrasted — perhaps  almost  too  obviously. 
The  two  servants  of  the  Montagues  are  set  over  against 
the  two  servants  of  the  Capulets.  The  effervescent  Ty- 
balt is  put  in  juxtaposition,  first  with  the  reserved  Ben- 
volio,  and  then  a  little  later  with  the  gallant  Mercutio, 
who  may  not  desire  a  quarrel  but  who  does  not  put  it 
from  him — as  Romeo  does  for  a  little  space,  moved  by 
his  affection  for  Juliet,  which  for  the  moment  includes  all 
her  kin.  The  broad  garrulity  of  the  Nurse  is  contrasted 
with  the  maternal  dignity  of  Lady  Capulet  and  with  the 
impatient  fervor  of  Juliet.  And  Juliet's  other  bride- 
groom, the  County  Paris,  is  brought  forward  as  Romeo's 
rival — a  rivalry  which  culminates  at  last  in  a  duel  to 
the  death  on  the  steps  of  Juliet's  tomb.  It  may  be 
admitted  that  on  analysis  these  several  antitheses  are 
almost  too  many  and  too  frequent;  they  are  the  result 
of  a  craftsmanship  not  yet  quite  sure  of  itself  and  there- 
fore careful  to  fortify  itself  at  every  possible  point.  But 
they  all  help  to  make  the  essential  struggle  clearer  and 
keener,  and  to  make  the  collision  of  will  more  immediate, 
more  incessant  and  more  effective. 

Having  a  story  which  he  delights  in  setting  on  the 
stage,  superbly  dramatic  in  itself  and  eternally  powerful 
in  its  appeal  to  the  playgoer,  having  peopled  this  story 
with  characters  dramatic  in  themselves,  having  con- 
trasted these  characters  with  almost  excessive  precau- 
tion, having  devised  a  masterly  exposition,  Shakspere 
neglects  none  of  the  other  tools  of  the  playwright.     Above 


ii2         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

all,  he  takes  infinite  pains  in  the  proper  preparation  of  his 
successive  episodes.  This  is  the  earliest  of  his  serious 
plays  in  which  he  discloses  adequately  and  abundantly 
what  a  French  critic  has  aptly  termed  "the  properly  dra- 
matic side  of  his  genius,  that  is,  the  art  of  linking  the 
scenes  together,  of  making  us  feel  what  atmosphere  we 
breathe  and  among  what  kind  of  men  we  move,  of  pre- 
paring effects  and  surprises  by  timely  hints,  so  that  we 
shall  indeed  be  surprised  but  not  startled,  and  we  shall 
be  moved  because  we  can  believe.''  For  an  example  of 
this  artful  attainment  of  instant  acceptability  we  may 
take  the  fiery  outburst  of  Tybalt  in  the  opening  scene, 
which  poses  him  before  us  and  tells  us  exactly  what  we 
may  expect  from  him  later,  so  that  his  picking  a  quarrel 
first  with  Romeo  and  then  with  Mercutio  seems,  when 
we  see  it,  not  only  natural  but  necessary.  Natural  and 
necessary  also  is  Romeo's  fatal  duel  with  Tybalt,  with 
whom  he  had  at  first  refused  to  fight,  and  who  had  since 
killed  Romeo's  best  friend  almost  under  Romeo's  eyes. 
No  spectator  can  fail  to  feel  the  tragic  irony  of  this 
death  of  Juliet's  kinsman  by  the  hand  of  Romeo  on 
the  very  day  when  Juliet  and  Romeo  had  been  married. 
There  is  the  same  adroit  preparation  in  the  first  meet- 
ing of  the  hero  and  heroine.  Romeo's  fancy  has  lightly 
turned  to  thoughts  of  love  and  he  supposes  himself  en- 
amoured of  Rosaline,  being  thus  predisposed  for  a  deeper 
passion;  and  Juliet  descends  to  the  dance  expecting  to 
meet  a  wooer.  Both  are  ready  for  the  sudden  springing 
up  of  the  flame  which  was  to  light  their  funeral  pyre. 
The  balcony  scene  comes  quickly,  burning  with  ardor  and 
heightened  by  the  danger  of  discovery,  which,  as  Juliet 
declares,  would  mean  death  to  Romeo.  Even  in  the 
delight  of  this  first  meeting  Juliet  foresees  the  doom  that 


'ROMEO  AND  JULIET'  113 

lowers  over  their  love.  "I  have  no  joy  of  this  contract 
to-night,"  she  exclaims;  "it  is  too  rash,  too  unadvised, 
too  sudden."  And  Friar  Lawrence,  a  little  later,  echoes 
again  the  note  of  impending  fate:  "These  violent  delights 
have  violent  ends."  From  beginning  to  end  Shakspere 
makes  most  skilful  use  of  the  element  of  suspense.  We 
follow  every  episode  in  turn  with  intense  interest  in  the 
scene  itself,  and  with  a  breathless  fear  as  to  the  episode 
which  is  to  come  after. 

In  no  other  of  his  tragedies  has  Shakspere  more  skilfully 
relieved  with  humor  the  tension  of  his  serious  scenes, 
now  affording  a  pleasant  contrast  and  again  providing 
the  relaxation  of  laughter  to  lighten  the  strain  of  pathos. 
The  opening  episode  of  the  faction  fight  is  begun  by  a 
quartet  of  comic  servants.  The  following  scenes  are 
illumined  by  the  coruscating  gaiety  of  Mercutio,  soon 
to  be  quenched  in  death.  The  fierce  passion  of  Juliet  is 
set  off  by  the  broad  tolerance  of  the  Nurse,  coarse,  vital, 
human — the  richest  of  all  Shakspere's  comic  characters 
between  Bottom  and  Falstaff.  The  Nurse  is  all  prose 
and  Juliet  is  all  poetry.  Nothing  could  be  more  char- 
acteristic in  itself  than  the  Nurse's  advice  to  marry 
Paris;  and  it  also  affords  a  magnificent  opportunity  for 
the  expression  of  the  depth  of  Juliet's  passion.  This 
brief  scene  is  at  once  deeply  pathetic  and  broadly  humor- 
ous, and  it  is  the  more  pathetic  because  of  its  humor. 
And  then,  after  Juliet  has  taken  the  potion  and  is 
reported  dead,  we  have  the  trivial  chatter  of  the  musi- 
cians and  the  servants  to  loosen  the  tension  and  to  pro- 
long expectancy. 


ii4        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


IV 


Attention  has  here  been  directed  to  the  articulation  of 
the  skeleton  of  the  action,  because  it  is  this  dexterous  con- 
struction which  supports  the  story  and  which  is  respon- 
sible for  the  enduring  success  of  the  play.  Moreover,  the 
construction  is  concealed  from  most  of  those  who  enjoy 
the  tragedy  by  the  beauty  of  the  poetry  and  by  the 
variety  and  veracity  of  the  psychology.  In  no  one  of 
Shakspere's  earlier  plays  had  he  peopled  his  plot  with 
characters,  all  of  them  alive  and  all  of  them  true  to  life. 
It  is  in  this  play  that,  for  the  first  time,  he  exhibits 
his  supreme  power  of  endowing  all  his  creatures  with  a 
vitality  of  their  own.  Even  the  relatively  unimportant 
Benvolio  is  individual  and  indisputable;  and  even  the 
pale  profile  of  the  Apothecary,  seen  only  for  an  instant, 
etches  itself  on  the  memory. 

As  for  the  poetry  in  which  the  play  is  bathed,  that 
needs  no  praise;  it  is  patent  to  all  who  hear  it.  *  Romeo 
and  Juliet'  is  a  true  poetic  drama,  because  it  is  dramatic 
in  theme  and  dramatic  in  treatment,  as  well  as  poetic  in 
theme  and  poetic  in  treatment.  A  British  critic  once 
found  fault  with  Ibsen  because  he  allowed  his  characters 
to  express  themselves  in  the  fittest  words  rather  than  in 
the  most  beautiful  words.  What  Shakspere  achieved  more 
than  once,  and  particularly  in  this  play,  is  the  union  of  the 
fittest  words  and  the  most  beautiful.  Juliet  and  Romeo 
phrase  their  passion  in  most  exquisite  and  melodious  verse, 
and  yet  they  utter  only  what  is  exactly  appropriate  for 
them  to  utter.  The  emotions  they  express  with  all  the 
luxuriance  of  poetry,  the  thoughts  they  put  into  lines 
of  undying  felicity,  are  the  very  emotions  and  the  very 


' ROMEO  AND  JULIET'  115 

thoughts  they  would  naturally  declare  if  they  were  re- 
duced to  the  bare  prose  of  every-day  life. 

To  say  this  is  not  to  suggest  that  Shakspere  is  always 
faultless.  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  was  composed  in  his 
youthful  immaturity  when  he  was  still  subject  to  the  in- 
fluences of  his  epoch.  There  are  speeches  couched  in  that 
high-flown  grandiloquence  which  was  common  in  the  stage- 
diction  of  the  period.  Even  in  certain  of  Romeo's  own 
utterances  (though  only  in  the  earlier  episodes)  we  find 
merely  fanciful  phrases,  far-fetched  comparisons,  conceit- 
hunting,  quite  in  the  manner  of  the  Elizabethan  sonnet- 
eers. There  is  here  an  impression  of  mere  cleverness 
for  its  own  sake,  perhaps  not  insincere,  but  suggesting 
a  sentiment  not  so  deeply  felt  that  it  could  not  be  played 
with  for  the  sheer  pleasure  of  the  playing.  Even  Juliet, 
when  the  Nurse  tells  her  "he  is  dead"  and  leaves  her  in 
doubt  whether  or  not  it  is  Romeo  who  has  gone,  at  the 
very  height  of  her  anxiety,  quibbles  on  /  and  ay,  in  the 
taste  of  the  time,  which  seems  to  us  now  false  to  her 
surging  emotion.  The  family  lamentations  over  the  sup- 
posed death  of  Juliet  are  artificial,  antiphonal,  almost 
operatic.  The  dialogue  is  sometimes  self-conscious,  and 
therefore  to  that  extent  undramatic;  and  it  is  sometimes 
stiff*  with  rhetoric,  and  therefore  to  that  extent  frankly 
theatric. 

Moreover  there  is  a  superabundance  of  rime,  not 
merely  in  the  lyric  passages,  in  which  it  might  have  a 
certain  propriety,  but  in  the  contemplative  and  emo- 
tional passages  where  its  propriety  is  not  apparent. 
Romeo's  soliloquy  in  the  first  act,  at  the  sight  of  Juliet, 
is  in  rime,  and  so  is  the  soliloquy  of  Friar  Lawrence,  in 
the  second  act,  although  it  would  have  been  more  impres- 
sive in  the  nobler  harmony  of  blank  verse.  The  rimes  are 
in  couplets  more  often  than  not,  and  yet  there  are  quat- 


u6        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

rains,  scattered  here  and  there  throughout  the  earlier 
scenes,  even  in  passages  devoid  of  any  lyric  elevation. 
Quaintly  characteristic  of  the  Elizabethan  temper  is  the 
arrangement  in  sonnet-form  of  the  lines  which  Romeo 
and  Juliet  interchange  at  their  first  meeting.  But  Shak- 
spere  shows  his  usual  discretion  in  putting  into  prose  the 
talk  of  the  servants. 

One  flaw  has  been  picked  in  the  conduct  of  the  plot — 
the  non-delivery  of  Friar  Lawrence's  letter  to  Romeo  in 
Mantua.  This  is  purely  the  result  of  an  accident;  it  is 
brought  about  by  the  long  arm  of  coincidence  rather  than 
indicated  by  the  finger  of  fate.  It  has  been  defended 
on  the  plea  that  accident  is  forever  interfering  in  the 
affairs  of  men,  and  that  in  real  life  the  unexpected  is  con- 
tinually happening.  To  urge  this  is  to  confound  the 
reality  of  nature  with  the  reality  of  art.  There  is  no 
advantage  in  denying  that  the  reason  why  Romeo  did 
not  receive  the  letter  in  time  is  arbitrary;  it  is  due  to  the 
direct  intervention  of  the  dramatist  himself.  But,  after 
all,  this  is  but  a  trifle;  it  is  only  a  petty  lapse  from  the 
inevitability  of  the  tragedy,  since  we  all  know  that  the  fate 
of  the  lovers  is  already  sealed.  Even  if  this  letter  had 
been  delivered  in  time,  some  other  stroke  of  ill  fortune 
would  have  prevented  Romeo's  arrival  in  season  to  save 
Juliet's  life.  What  had  to  be,  had  to  be;  and  no  one  need 
cavil  at  the  specific  accident  which  brought  about  what 
was  certain  from  the  very  beginning.  Violent  delights 
could  have  only  a  violent  end.  Shakespere  cleverly  con- 
ceals his  employment  of  a  casual  accident  by  only  telling 
us  about  it  and  by  not  showing  us  the  actual  interference 
with  the  messenger  who  bore  it.  On  the  stage,  narrative 
makes  little  impression;  and  the  spectators  keep  in  mind 
only  what  they  have  seen  with  their  own  eyes. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  FALSTAFF  PLAYS 


Although  we  can  never  feel  sure  that  we  have  ascer- 
tained the  exact  order  in  which  Shakspere  wrote  his  pieces, 
there  seems  to  be  little  or  no  doubt  that  the  plays  in  which 
Falstaff  first  figures  were  composed  later  than  '  Romeo 
and  Juliet,'  strange  as  it  may  seem  that  Shakspere  should 
have  condescended  to  the  loosely  knit  chronicle-play  after 
he  had  achieved  the  singleness  of  plot  and  the  directness 
of  action  which  he  had  attained  in  the  earliest  of  his 
masterly  tragedies.  And  yet  the  two  parts  of  'Henry  IV,' 
even  if  they  mark  a  retrogression  in  constructive  energy, 
reveal  an  indisputable  advance  in  power  of  character- 
creation.  Perhaps  Shakspere  chose  to  return  to  the  lax 
liberty  of  the  chronicle-play  because  he  felt  that  he 
needed  its  large  freedom  to  display  the  huge  bulk  of  his 
greatest  comic  character. 

The  Elizabethan  drama  had  inherited  from  the  medieval 

drama  the  habit  of  commingling  with  lofty  characters  a 

group  of  rude  fellows  of  the  baser  sort,  whose  share  in  the 

action  often  seems  to  us  now  frankly  incongruous.     The 

sheep-stealing  of  Mak,  for  example,  is  injected  into  the 

mystery  at  the  very   moment  when   the   shepherds   are 

watching  their  flocks  by  night,  just  before  the  glad  tidings 

of  the  birth  of  Him  whose  coming  was  to  change  the  fate 

of  the  world.     From  the  frequency  with  which  Shakspere 

117 


u8         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

went  back  to  the  chronicle-play  with  its  careless  succession 
of  episodes  heroic  and  humorous,  we  may  assume  that  he 
felt  assured  that  his  audiences  would  unfailingly  relish  its 
swift  alternations  of  fun  and  of  fighting,  and  also  that  they 
were  of  true  Teutonic  descent,  never  demanding  the  close 
unity  of  construction  which  the  inheritors  of  the  Latin 
tradition  are  trained  to  expect.  Even  in  the  twentieth 
century  the  playwrights  of  our  language  who  make  the 
broadest  popular  appeal  are  careful  to  compound  their 
melodramas  in  accord  with  a  formula  not  unlike  mixing 
laughter  with  tears  and  making  their  plays  medleys  of 
tense  situations  and  of  comic  episodes  which  are  often 
more  or  less  extraneous  to  the  main  theme. 

The  exciting  cause  of  *  Henry  V  and  of  the  two  parts 
of  'Henry  IV'  (of  which  the  future  Henry  V  is  really 
the  hero)  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  most  slovenly  of 
contemporary  chronicle-plays,  the  'Famous  Victories  of 
Henry  the  Fifth/  Apparently  it  was  this  thin  and  empty 
piece  which  attracted  Shakspere's  attention  to  the  fasci- 
nating personality  of  the  roistering  young  prince  who  was 
to  expand  into  the  noble  victor  of  Agincourt.  In  that 
epoch  of  patriotic  enthusiasm  no  one  of  the  national 
heroes  was  closer  to  the  hearts  of  the  English  people  than 
the  gay  Prince  Hal,  who  was  successful  in  war  and  in 
wooing.  He  was  the  kind  of  king  that  the  English  liked 
— brave,  gay  and  unassuming;  and  they  liked  him  none 
the  less  for  the  wildness  of  his  youth.  The  sure  instinct 
of  mankind  has  always  recognized  the  larger  possibilities 
of  good  in  the  Prodigal  Son,  preferring  him  to  his  staid 
and  sober  elder  brother,  to  whom  there  seems  to  cling  a 
taint  of  the  Pharisee. 

For  a  fuller  knowledge  of  Henry  V  Shakspere  goes  to 
Holinshed,  as  he  had  already  done  when  he  was  at  work 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  119 

on  'King  John'  and  'Richard  II,'  and  as  he  was  to  do 
later  when  he  undertook  to  deal  with  ' Macbeth.'  Most 
of  his  material  in  all  three  of  the  plays  in  which  Henry  V 
figures  Shakspere  derived  from  the  old  historian;  and  the 
'Famous  Victories'  did  little  more  than  furnish  sparse 
hints  for  unimportant  comic  characters  and  for  minor 
humorous  incidents.  These  hints,  slight  and  insignificant 
in  themselves,  were  sufficient  to  set  Shakspere's  imagina- 
tion at  work.  As  a  result,  the  three  plays,  based  as  they 
are  more  or  less  indirectly  on  the  feeble  piece  he  took 
over,  and  more  or  less  directly  on  the  record  of  Holinshed, 
are  in  fact  as  original  as  anything  he  wrote.  And  they 
contain  his  mightiest  achievement  in  the  creation  of 
comic  character,  a  creation  which  is  entirely  his  own, 
since  there  is  only  the  faintest  suggestion  of  the  towering 
FalstafF  in  the  'Famous  Victories.' 

II 

If  we  may  set  aside  'Richard  III'  as  a  chronicle-play 
which  is  almost  a  tragedy,  then  we  must  admit  that  the 
first  part  of  'Henry  IV  is  the  most  interesting  of  all  the 
other  histories  and  the  most  dramatic  in  its  separate  epi- 
sodes, fragmentary  as  the  play  may  be  in  its  framework. 
It  is  a  brisk  and  bustling  succession  of  scenes,  with 
vivacity  of  movement,  with  humorous  realism  in  the  ac- 
cessory figures,  and  with  all  possible  spectacular  accom- 
paniment. Even  though  the  name  of  Henry  IV  is  be- 
stowed on  both  parts,  it  is  the  future  Henry  V  who  is 
the  central  personality,  lending  to  the  plays  such  doubt- 
ful unity  as  they  may  have.  Indeed,  it  might  be  sug- 
gested that  Shakspere  has  really  devoted  a  trilogy  to 
the  development  of  the  wild  prince  into  a  wise  king;  and 


120        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

'Henry  V  may  be  considered  as  a  third  part  of  'Henry 
IV.'  That  this  triple  portrayal  of  the  career  of  Henry  V 
was  in  Shakspere's  mind  is  made  probable  by  the  epi- 
logue to  the  second  part  promising  to  follow  it  with  an- 
other piece  dealing  with  Henry  V. 

This  trilogy  sets  before  us  the  three  epochs  of  Henry's 
transformation  from  a  reckless  roisterer  into  a  kingly 
general  who  can  win  a  battle  and  court  a  fair  maid  in 
royal  fashion.  In  the  earliest  play  he  is  companioned  by 
Falstaff,  to  bring  out  the  lower  side  of  his  nature  and  his 
juvenile  protest  against  restraint,  and  at  the  same  time 
he  is  contrasted  with  Hotspur  to  evoke  his  nobler  pos- 
sibilities. Falstaff  is  the  fit  associate  of  his  youthful 
irresponsibility  and  Hotspur  is  the  proper  rival  to  evoke 
his  latent  power  of  leadership.  In  this  first  part,  the 
prince  is  almost  a  rogue  and  a  vagabond,  even  if  he  tells 
us  that  he  is  but  biding  his  time.  In  the  second  part,  he 
tries  on  the  crown  before  his  father's  death;  and  then 
swiftly  succeeds  to  the  throne.  In  the  third  part  (that  is, 
in  'Henry  V),  he  has  broken  absolutely  with  his  dis- 
reputable past;  he  stands  forth  a  true  man  and  a  good 
king,  a  congenial  monarch  for  the  English  folk — a  mon- 
arch who  marries  at  last  and  settles  down  to  govern  for 
the  good  of  his  people. 

The  first  part  presents  a  definite  action  in  that  it  deals 
with  the  cause  of  the  rebellion  of  Hotspur  and  his  allies, 
with  the  course  of  this  rebellion,  and  with  the  collapse  of 
it,  after  the  fiery  young  rebel  has  been  slain  in  single  bat- 
tle by  Prince  Hal.  The  play  begins  with  a  striking  expo- 
sition, which  sets  before  us,  in  dialogue  and  in  action, 
the  insubordination  of  the  dissatisfied  faction.  This  open- 
ing scene  calls  attention  to  the  opposing  figures  of  Prince 
Henry  and  of  Hotspur;  and   it  arouses   the  interest  of 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  121 

expectancy  by  declaring  the  collision  of  personal  and 
political  ambitions  which  is  to  be  the  motive  of  the  play. 
Then  the  young  Prince  and  the  old  Falstaff  come  before 
us  in  person;  they  are  instantly  welcome,  and  what  they 
say  whets  our  curiosity  to  see  them  again  that  we  may 
observe  their  walk  and  conversation,  and  more  immedi- 
ately that  we  may  learn  how  the  projected  Gadshill  rob- 
bery will  turn  out.  And  in  the  final  scene  of  the  act  we 
behold  Hotspur  himself  chafing  against  the  King,  and  we 
are  present  when  the  rebellion  is  hatched. 

After  this  lively  beginning  the  play  rolls  onward  to  its 
conclusion,  the  defeat  of  the  rebels  and  the  reconciliation 
of  the  king  with  his  son,  who  has  revealed  himself  as  a 
fit  inheritor  of  the  throne.  This  first  part  of  'Henry  IV 
may  almost  be  said  to  have  a  definite  plot,  with  the  future 
Henry  V  for  its  hero.  The  historic  story  is  interrupted 
only  by  the  humorous  episodes  in  which  Falstaff  figures, 
and  even  these  extraneous  scenes  are  tied  to  the  history 
by  the  fact  that  Prince  Hal  takes  part  in  most  of  them. 
With  careful  ingenuity  Shakspere  intertwines  the  strands 
of  heroism  and  of  humor,  contrasting  Prince  Hal  at  one 
moment  with  the  fiery  young  Hotspur  and  at  another 
with  the  rotund  and  disreputable  Falstaff. 

Ill 

This  first  part  is  complete  in  itself;  it  has  a  firmer  co- 
herence than  any  other  of  Shakspere's  histories,  a  more 
definite  unity  of  purpose.  The  second  part  was  not  nec- 
essary to  develop  the  prince;  and  Shakspere  might  have 
gone  on  at  once  to  i Henry  V.'  Quite  possibly  this  was 
his  original  intention,  and  the  second  part  may  have  been 
an  afterthought,  in  consequence  of  the  immediate  popu- 


122         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

larity  of  the  first  part  when  it  was  presented  on  the  stage. 
Although  the  second  part  of  '  Henry  IV  is  more  labored 
than  the  first  part,  it  appears  to  have  been  put  together 
hastily;  it  lacks  even  the  semblance  of  a  plot;  and  its  action 
is  scattered.  There  is  no  new  Hotspur  to  bring  out  the 
best  in  Prince  Hal;  and  FalstafF  is  seen  at  work  all  by 
himself  and  no  longer  in  close  alliance  with  the  prince. 
Perhaps  in  consequence  of  the  absence  of  a  commanding 
motive,  the  opening  scenes  provide  only  a  clumsy  exposi- 
tion. The  play  begins  by  an  induction  or  a  prologue 
spoken  by  Rumor,  a  device  of  doubtful  necessity.  Neither 
Henry  IV  nor  the  future  Henry  V  appears  in  the  first 
act.  The  sluggishness  of  the  story  as  a  whole  is  en- 
livened by  few  individual  scenes  of  dramatic  effective- 
ness. The  second  rebellion  is  abortive,  and  it  has  no 
dramatic  culmination.  Even  the  impressive  relation  of 
the  dying  king  to  his  youthful  successor  is  set  forth 
rather  by  pregnant  speeches  than  by  actual  scenes  in 
which  character  stands  revealed  in  action.  In  fact, 
Shakspere's  method  is  here  rhetorical  rather  than  truly 
dramatic;  and  it  is  the  poet,  not  the  playwright,  who 
provides  the  superb  soliloquies  in  which  Henry  IV  and 
Henry  V  commune  with  themselves,  lyrical  outbursts,  in 
manner  not  unlike  those  of  the  dying  tenor  in  old- 
fashioned  Italian  opera.  Finally,  the  comic  interludes 
of  FalstafF  are  more  obviously  invented  by  the  author 
and  no  longer  impress  us  as  irresistible  transcripts  from 
life  itself;  they  seem  to  exist  more  for  their  own  sake 
than  for  the  sake  of  the  play  as  a  whole. 

1  Henry  V  is  quite  as  loose  in  its  structure  as  the  sec- 
ond part  of  '  Henry  IV;  it  has  no  other  unity  than  the 
presence  of  the  young  king.  It  is  a  mere  drum-and-trum- 
pet  history,  with  alarums  and  cannon-shots,  sieges  and 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  123 

battles,  the  defiance  of  heralds,  and  the  marching  of 
armies.  As  a  specimen  of  playmaking  it  is  indefensibly 
artless.  Furnivall  frankly  admitted  that  "a  siege  and  a 
battle,  with  one  bit  of  light  love-making,  cannot  form  a 
drama,  whatever  amount  of  historical  patriotic  speeches 
and  comic  relief  are  introduced  ";  and  Brandes  is  equally 
plain-spoken,  dismissing  this  piece  as  "an  epic  in  dialogue, 
without  any  sort  of  dramatic  structure,  development  or 
conflict."  Possibly  Shakspere  was  getting  dissatisfied 
with  the  chronicle-play  as  a  form  which  made  too  little 
demand  upon  him;  and,  in  fact,  ' Henry  V  is  the  last  of 
his  histories,  with  the  exception  only  of  '  Henry  VIII' 
(which  is  not  wholly  his  handiwork).  In  ' Henry  V  he 
does  not  hesitate  to  avail  himself  of  the  medieval  de- 
vice of  the  expositor,  whose  narrative  served  to  link 
together  the  separate  incidents  of  the  long-drawn  mys- 
tery-play. Chorus  is  sent  on  the  stage  not  only  to  speak 
propitiatory  prologue,  but  to  reappear  again  and  again 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  bridging  over  the  yawning  gaps 
of  the  action  by  telling  the  spectators  what  is  supposed 
to  have  taken  place  during  the  intervals. 

As  Prince  Hal  was  contrasted  with  Hotspur  in  the  first 
part  of  '  Henry  IV,'  so  he  is  provided  with  a  foil  in  '  Henry 
V,'  but  with  far  less  effect,  since  the  Dauphin  is  only  a 
vain  braggart,  whose  boastings  are  hollow  even  in  the 
ears  of  his  own  countrymen.  Throughout  the  play  Shak- 
spere is  grossly  unfair  to  the  French,  pandering  to  the 
prejudice  of  the  insular  rabble  in  a  fashion  quite  unwor- 
thy of  a  great  poet.  Indeed,  the  value  of  Henry's  victory 
is  diminished  by  the  needless  doubts  cast  on  the  valor  of 
the  foes  the  English  king  overcame.  The  play  burns 
with  patriotic  fervor  and  bristles  with  patriotic  appeals, 
often   perilously  close   to    jingoism,   if  not  to   claptrap. 


i24        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

The  king  himself  is  provided  with  unending  speeches  of 
a  swelling  eloquence,  superb  specimens  of  declamation 
for  its  own  sake,  examples  of  bravura  rhetoric  which 
afford  rich  histrionic  opportunities,  even  if  they  are 
sometimes  devoid  of  dramatic  significance.  High-flown 
as  these  orations  are,  we  need  not  doubt  Shakspere's 
sincerity  in  penning  them,  even  if  we  may  suspect  also 
his  consciousness  that  they  would  appeal  directly  to  the 
hearts  of  his  hearers. 


IV 

Casually  put  together  as  are  the  three  pieces  in  which 
Henry  V  is  the  central  figure,  they  disclose  a  distinct 
expansion  of  Shakspere's  power  of  treating  character. 
We  discover  now  that  he  has  arrived  at  that  period  of  his 
development  as  a  dramatist  when  he  can  call  into  exist- 
ence at  will  as  many  varied  and  veracious  human  beings 
as  he  may  need.  In  his  earliest  plays  he  had  reproduced 
the  traditional  profiles  of  his  predecessors;  Costard  and 
Dull,  Launce  and  Speed,  the  two  Dromios,  are  little  more 
than  the  conventional  clowns  of  the  earlier  Elizabethan 
stage;  and  in  these  same  pieces  even  the  more  serious  char- 
acters are  such  as  a  clever  young  man  might  fashion  gaily 
out  of  his  memory  of  similar  parts  in  older  plays.  In  time 
Shakspere  came  to  see  that  he  did  not  need  to  devise  fan- 
tastic kings  of  Navarre  and  to  evoke  mythological  dukes 
of  Athens;  he  had  only  to  look  about  him  and  to  set  his 
energy  to  work  creating  characters  akin  to  those  he  had 
actually  seen  in  the  flesh.  Bottom  and  his  mates  are  no 
longer  the  mere  masks  of  the  theater;  they  smack  of 
reality  and  they  sprang  from  the  soil  of  England.     In 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  125 

'Romeo  and  Juliet'  hero  and  heroine  alike  are  alive  with 
their  own  vitality;  and  the  Nurse  is  a  superb  comic  char- 
acter, even  if  Peter  is  still  own  cousin  to  Launce  and 
Speed. 

In  the  Henry  V  trilogy,  deficient  as  it  is  in  dramatic 
intensity,  the  traditional  and  conventional  personages  dis- 
appear. Almost  every  one  of  the  characters,  major  or 
minor,  stands  forth  a  genuine  man  or  woman,  begotten 
by  imagination  out  of  observation.  The  gift  of  in- 
exhaustible creation,  the  faculty  of  breathing  the  breath 
of  life  into  his  creatures  and  of  sending  them  into  the 
world  to  walk  on  their  own  feet,  to  speak  with  their  own 
voices,  and  to  act  in  accord  with  their  own  wills — this 
marvelous  power  which  makes  Shakspere  supreme  among 
all  dramatic  poets, — is  made  manifest  in  these  three 
chronicle-plays,  inhabited  as  they  are  by  a  host  of  char- 
acters who  are  truly  characters,  no  longer  merely  parts 
compounded  primarily  to  please  the  actors. 

Henry  himself,  first  of  all  a  true  man  every  inch  of 
him,  and  every  inch  a  king,  brave,  unassuming,  full  of 
humor,  and  of  good  humor  also,  pious  on  occasion  and 
prayerful,  equally  ready  to  fight  the  French  king  or  to 
court  the  French  princess;  the  old  king,  the  enfeebled  and 
weary  Bolingbroke,  uneasily  doubtful  of  the  son  who  is 
so  unlike  him;  Hotspur  the  fiery,  and  his  wife,  a  fit  spouse 
for  so  unquenchable  a  spirit;  Owen  Glendower,  confident 
of  his  power  to  call  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep;  the  Chief 
Justice,  a  vigorous  and  sympathetic  personality;  the 
sharply  contrasted  nobles,  adherents  of  the  king,  con- 
spirators and  traitors,  all  limned  with  a  firm  precision 
of  outline,  even  though  they  are  but  subordinate  figures, 
needful  only  to  fill  in  the  background  of  the  successive 
episodes — what   a   gallery   this  is  of  richly  colored  por- 


126         SHAKSPERE  AS  A   PLAYWRIGHT 

traits  brushed  in  by  a  master  hand  which  has  learned  the 
value  of  economy  of  stroke! 

By  the  side  of  these  more  or  less  heroic  personages  we 
have  a  teeming  crowd  of  humorous  characters,  fresh  and 
natural,  no  longer  traditional  and  conventional.  First 
of  all,  the  roistering  crew  that  fellowships  with  Falstaff — 
Poins,  the  prince's  ally,  and  Bardolph  of  the  flaming  nose; 
then  Pistol,  the  truculent  Elizabethan,  and  the  unfor- 
getable  pair  of  up-country  worthies,  Shallow  and  Silence; 
Mrs.  Quickly,  own  sister  to  the  Nurse  in  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet'  (and  obviously  designed  for  the  same  performer), 
with  her  satellite  Doll  Tearsheet,  a  piece  of  realism  un- 
surpassed by  the  later  French  naturalists;  and  finally, 
Doll's  appropriate  mate,  Nym,  and  the  delightful  Boy, 
who  is  truly  a  boy,  with  a  boy's  keen  vision  into  the 
foibles  and  the  falsities  of  those  he  serves.  Dekker  and 
Jonson,  sworn  realists  as  they  were,  have  not  more  sig- 
nificantly suggested  the  low  life  of  London  with  a  more 
Hogarth-like  fidelity  to  the  fact.  Not  often  was  Shak- 
spere  willing  to  descend  to  these  depths  of  humorous 
realism;  he  preferred  to  dwell  on  a  loftier  heroic  plane; 
but  here  he  discloses  his  ability  to  seize  these  lowly  and 
sordid  creatures  and  to  etch  their  sorry  characteristics 
with  an  artistic  appreciation  and  an  artistic  sobriety  that 
Dickens  was  not  to  attain. 

In  the  third  play,  '  Henry  V,'  in  which  we  see  the  king 
going  forth  to  war  as  the  leader  of  the  English,  he  is 
accompanied  by  representatives  of  all  the  varied  stocks  of 
the  British  Isles — Fluellen,  the  choleric  Welshman;  Mac- 
morris,  the  impulsive  Irishman;  Jamy,  the  cautious  Scot; 
and  the  sturdy  Williams,  a  right  Englishman,  holding  his 
own  with  manly  simplicity  even  in  the  presence  of  the 
sovran.     Williams,  for  all  the  brevity  of  his  portrayal, 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  127 

is  as  Shaksperian  a  character  as  any,  and  he  exemplifies 
an  aspect  of  Shakspere's  comprehension  not  evident  in 
any  other  play — his  understanding  of  the  plain  people, 
devoid  of  all  affectation  and  doing  their  duty  as  they 
see  it  in  manful  fashion,  but  without  any  pretense  and 
with  due  insistence  on  their  right  to  have  their  own 
opinions  even  as  to  the  deeds  of  their  lawful  rulers. 

Of  all  this  host  of  characters,  high  and  low,  only  one 
has  worn  out  his  welcome  to-day.  The  rest  of  them  are 
as  spontaneous  and  as  acceptable  as  they  were  three  cen- 
turies ago;  but  Pistol  no  longer  appeals  to  our  risibilities, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  probably  evoked  more  laughter 
when  he  was  first  seen  than  any  of  his  fellows.  Pistol  is 
the  Elizabethan  variant  of  the  stage-braggart,  the  boast- 
ful coward  of  Greek  comedy  who  had  come  to  life  again 
in  the  Italian  comedy-of-masks  and  a  little  later  in  English 
comedy.  Shakspere  has  freshened  him  up  by  putting  in 
his  mouth  abundant  parody  of  contemporary  bombast. 
When  Pistol  made  his  first  appearance  he  was  particu- 
larly up  to  date;  but  unfortunately  what  is  up  to  date 
soon  becomes  out  of  date.  A  jest's  prosperity  lies  in  the 
ear  of  him  that  hears  it;  and  our  ears  have  long  lost  their 
relish  for  this  kind  of  Tudor  humor.  Pistol  was  contem- 
porary, and  therefore  he  has  proved  to  be  temporary 
only,  as  nearly  always  happens.  He  was  founded  rather 
in  fashion  than  in  nature,  and  his  fantastic  fooling  is  now 
wearisome. 


128         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


Falstaff,  however,  is  eternal;  he  is  for  all  time,  his  own, 
first  of  all,  and  ours  also,  and  for  our  children's  children 
after  us.  He  is  the  greatest  as  well  as  the  hugest  of 
Shakspere's  comic  characters,  unmatched  in  the  works  of 
any  other  dramatist.  He  is  the  living  proof  of  Lowell's 
assertion  that  Shakspere  is  immeasurably  superior  to 
his  contemporaries  "in  his  power  of  pervading  a  character 
with  humor,  creating  it  out  of  humor,  so  to  speak,  and 
yet  never  overstepping  the  limits  of  nature  and  coarsen- 
ing into  caricature."  Nothing  that  Shakspere  had  done 
before,  not  even  Bottom  or  the  Nurse,  foretold  the  unc- 
tuous richness  of  Falstaff's  fun,  founded  on  sheer  ani- 
mal spirits,  and  therefore  supported  by  an  inexhaust- 
ible gaiety,  unquenchable  even  in  adverse  circumstances. 
As  Bagehot  remarked,  "if  most  men  were  to  save  up  all 
the  gaiety  of  their  whole  lives,  it  would  come  about  to 
the  gaiety  of  one  speech  in  Falstaff";  and  the  fat  knight 
himself  never  thought  of  saving  up  any  of  his  gaiety. 
He  pours  it  forth  in  riotous  profusion;  he  is  a  reckless 
spendthrift  of  humor;  and  he  is  not  only  witty  himself, 
but  the  cause  of  wit  in  others,  as  he  says  himself.  His 
presence  is  the  signal  for  laughter  and  he  is  enveloped  by 
an  atmosphere  of  joviality.  He  is  the  living  embodiment 
of  good  cheer  and  of  hearty  cheerfulness.  He  is  damp- 
ened by  few  misgivings  as  to  the  present  or  the  future.  He 
lives  in  this  world  now  and  he  makes  the  best  of  it,  never 
failing  to  find  fun  in  it  and  treating  life  as  a  joke.  He 
is  sagacious,  it  is  true;  and  it  has  been  well  said  that  he 
has  rotundity  of  mind  as  well  as  rotundity  of  body.  He 
is  a  world  in  himself,  rolling  through  space,  accompanied 
by  his  satellites,  who  are  drawn  to  him  by  irresistible 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  129 

attraction.  Well  might  Emerson  say  that  Shakspere's 
"fun  is  as  wise  as  his  earnest;  its  foundations  are  below 
frost." 

It  is  a  fact,  of  course,  that  Falstaff's  wit  is  often  only 
verbal;  but  this  might  be  said  of  almost  every  other  wit. 
A  wit  is  constrained  to  be  witty;  he  cannot  help  manifest- 
ing his  essential  quality.  He  is  ever  on  the  alert  to  shoot 
out  the  sharp  and  unexpected  saying;  and  he  wings  his 
shaft  with  a  merely  verbal  felicity  whenever  the  more  in- 
tellectually humorous  idea  does  not  immediately  present 
itself.  A  pun  has  been  called  the  lowest  form  of  wit, 
perhaps  because  it  is  so  often  the  foundation-stone;  and 
he  who  is  keen  to  thrust  and  parry  in  speech  guards  and 
lunges  with  whatever  weapon  he  may  hold  in  his  hand. 
But  the  humor  of  Falstaff  is  also  intellectual;  and  beyond 
all  question  it  is  incessant  and  incomparable.  He  is 
indefatigably  nimble-witted,  turning  in  a  second  in  spite 
of  his  bulk,  for  his  brain  is  active  in  proportion  to  the 
sluggishness  of  his  body.  He  takes  color  from  his  com- 
panions, responding  to  their  unexpressed  desires.  No 
doubt,  he  is  conscious  of  his  own  gifts;  he  delights  in- 
tensely, with  a  keen  personal  pleasure,  in  the  laughter  he 
arouses  and  anticipates.  He  joys  in  his  own  fantastic 
inventions,  exaggerating  his  own  exaggerations  for  the 
sheer  fun  of  it,  never  seeking  to  be  merely  plausible  and 
scarcely  aspiring  to  be  believed.  His  is  truly  "a  splen- 
dacious  mendacity."  He  is  an  artist  in  lying,  and  he 
glories  in  his  command  of  every  resource  of  the  craft. 

He  never  lapses  from  the  good  nature  which  becomes 
his  huge  girth;  but  he  is  devoid  of  even  the  most  rudi- 
mentary morality.  He  is  not  only  a  braggart  and  a  liar, 
he  is  also  a  swindler  and  a  thief;  and  even  his  valor  is 
not  beyond  dispute.  He  is  absolutely  unhampered  by 
any  sort  of  scruple.     And  yet  we  like  him;   we  long  to 


i3o         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

have  him  reappear  again  and  again;  we  welcome  him  as 
a  constant  friend.  But  this  liking  of  ours  is  never  senti- 
mental, maudlin,  or  immoral.  We  are  willing  enough  that 
Falstaff  should  be  found  out  and  that  he  should  get  his 
deserts  all  in  good  time.  Even  if  we  feel  sorry  for  him, 
we  would  not  lift  a  hand  to  stay  the  proper  punishment. 
We  like  him  because  he  is  so  human;  that  is  the  key  to  his 
character,  his  humanity,  his  gross  humanity.  Nowhere 
else  has  Shakspere  more  completely  disclosed  his  disin- 
terestedness as  an  artist  than  in  the  detachment  with 
which  he  treats  his  masterpiece  of  humorous  creation. 
Not  merely  does  he  tolerate  Falstaff,  he  feels  also  a  com- 
prehensive artistic  sympathy  for  him  as  a  fellow  human 
being.  But  Shakspere  never  lets  this  artistic  sympathy 
warp  his  vision  or  tempt  him  to  confuse  the  eternal  stand- 
ards of  right  and  wrong;  he  knows,  even  better  than 
George  Eliot,  that  "consequences  are  unpitying."  In  the 
first  part  of  'Henry  IV  Shakspere  shows  that  there  is 
no  meanness  in  Falstaff,  and  that  his  mendacity  is  not 
malicious;  and  he  amuses  us  with  the  display  of  Falstaff's 
eel-like  ingenuity  in  wriggling  out  of  every  tight  place. 
But  in  the  second  part  Shakspere  lets  us  see  the  evil 
effects  of  Falstaff's  ethical  laxity;  indeed,  he  makes  evi- 
dent the  steady  deterioration  of  the  easy-going  humorist. 
The  trick  played  on  Mrs.  Quickly  is  frankly  contemptible, 
and  the  despoiling  of  Justice  Shallow  is  hardly  less  inde- 
fensible. Falstaff  has  sunk  almost  to  the  level  of  a  "con- 
fidence operator."  Yet  even  in  this  comparative  degra- 
dation he  had  that  which  attracted  all  who  knew  him. 
There  are  sad  hearts  when  Mrs.  Quickly  tells  at  last  how 
he  died  with  his  nose  as  sharp  as  a  pen;  and  Bardolph 
would  be  glad  to  be  with  him  then,  wherever  he  was,  in 
heaven  or  in  hell.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  very 
human. 


THE  FALSTAFF  PLAYS  131 

VI 

It  is  curious  that  Shakspere's  boldest  and  broadest 
comic  character  should  present  himself  most  amply  in  the 
rambling  episodes  of  a  chronicle-play  in  two  parts;  but 
it  is  not  surprising  that  the  author  should  have  been 
willing  to  put  Falstaff  into  a  comedy  wherein  he  might 
focus  the  interest  on  himself.  A  doubtful  tradition 
declares  that  Elizabeth  bade  Shakspere  "show  the  fat 
knight  in  love,"  and  that  he  complied  with  the  royal  com- 
mand as  promptly  as  Moliere  later  was  to  obey  the  be- 
hests of  Louis  XIV.  The  text  of  the  'Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor'  is  in  a  lamentable  state,  both  the  quarto  and  the 
folio  being  corrupt  and  incomplete.  And  the  evidence  of 
improvisation  is  plain;  the  play,  for  example,  does  not 
show  the  fulfilment  of  Dr.  Caius's  promise  to  get  even 
with  mine  Host  of  the  Garter.  We  do  not  even  know 
whether  or  not  the  ' Merry  Wives  of  Windsor'  was 
written  before  or  after  'Henry  V,'  in  which  we  are  told 
about  the  death  of  Falstaff.  In  the  earlier  'Henry  VI' 
he  had  been  spoken  of  as  still  alive  and  a  coward. 

There  is  inexplicable  confusion  in  the  life-stories  of  the 
characters,  if  we  seek  to  apply  the  standard  to  which  Bal- 
zac and  Thackeray  have  accustomed  us  when  they  carry 
over  their  creatures  from  one  fiction  to  another.  Feni- 
more  Cooper,  it  may  be  noted,  did  not  compose  the  five 
'Leatherstocking  Tales'  in  the  order  in  which  they  are 
to  be  read — that  is,  in  strict  historic  sequence.  In  the 
first  part  of  'Henry  IV  Mrs.  Quickly  has  a  husband, 
although  this  spouse  is  not  made  visible;  in  the  second 
part  she  is  a  widow,  and  Falstaff  wheedles  her  by  a  prom- 
ise of  marriage;  in  'Henry  V  she  is  married  to  Pistol; 
and  in  the  'Merry  Wives'  she  and  Pistol  seem  to  have 


132         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

had  no  previous  acquaintance.  In  'Henry  V  Bardolph 
is  hanged  for  stealing,  and  yet  he  reappears  in  the  'Merry 
Wives '  without  explanation.  What  is  still  stranger  to  our 
modern  point  of  view  is  to  find  that  Mrs.  Quickly,  whom 
we  have  known  only  as  the  keeper  of  a  disreputable 
tavern,  now  presents  herself  as  the  staid  servant  of  the 
eminently  respectable  Dr.  Caius,  and  even  as  the  con- 
fidant of  that  "pretty  virginity,"  sweet  Anne  Page.  But 
this  is  puzzling  only  because  we  have  put  ourselves  at  a 
point  of  view  which  would  have  seemed  as  absurd  to 
Shakspere  as  to  Moliere  after  him.  Neither  the  French 
dramatist  nor  the  English  recognized  the  obligation  that 
Balzac  and  Thackeray  felt,  to  provide  consistent  biog- 
raphies for  characters  who  return  to  the  stage.  The 
same  actor  played  Mrs.  Quickly  in  all  four  plays,  just  as 
Moliere  himself  appeared  as  Sganarelle  in  six  different 
pieces,  just  as  the  Italian  comedians  sustained  each  of 
them  always  the  same  single  character  no  matter  what 
the  plot  of  the  play  might  be,  regardless  of  the  relation 
this  character  had  borne  to  the  other  characters  in  any 
earlier  play.  Mrs.  Quickly,  Bardolph  and  Pistol  were 
parts  which  had  pleased  the  playgoers  who  would  be 
glad  to  welcome  them  again,  asking  no  questions  as  to 
their  adventures  in  the  meantime,  but  accepting  them 
at  once  for  what  they  were  when  they  reappeared. 

Nor  did  these  delighted  spectators  consider  the  date  of 
the  'Merry  Wives';  they  were  satisfied  to  behold  its 
bustling  swiftness  without  inquiring  whether  it  was  sup- 
posed to  take  place  under  Henry  IV  or  Henry  V,  or  even 
under  Elizabeth.  If  we  insist  upon  it,  we  can  remind 
ourselves  that  Falstaff  died  a  few  weeks  before  the  battle 
of  Agincourt;  and  Shakspere  even  goes  out  of  his  way  to 
tell  us  that  Fenton  had  been  a   "follower  of  the  mad 


THE  FALSTAFF  PLAYS  133 

prince,"  who  was  to  be  the  hero  of  Agincourt.  But  this 
is  only  the  outward  fact;  it  is  not  the  inner  truth — which 
is  that  the  merry  wives  did  not  play  their  pranks  until 
after  the  repulse  of  the  Armada.  In  this  comedy,  at 
least,  FalstafF  and  Mrs.  Quickly,  Bardolph  and  Pistol 
and  Nym  are  not  contemporaries  of  Henry  IV  or  of 
Henry  V;  they  are  subjects  of  the  valiant  daughter  of 
Henry  VIII.  Beyond  all  question  the  background  of  the 
'Merry  Wives'  is  Elizabethan;  and  indeed  this  is  the  only 
comedy  in  which  Shakspere  dealt  with  contemporary  life, 
with  the  English  manners  and  with  the  English  customs 
of  his  own  time.  There  is  the  accent  of  those  spacious 
days  when  the  English  people  were  prosperous  and  proud, 
stout-hearted  and  gay.  There  is  the  note  of  reality 
throughout  the  play,  of  things  known  intimately.  Shak- 
spere gives  us  here  not  a  sketch  of  the  low  life  of  the  city, 
but  a  picture  of  the  middle  class  in  a  country  town. 
For  reasons  of  his  own,  obvious  enough,  Shakspere 
chooses  to  call  this  town  Windsor,  but  it  might  have  been 
Stratford,  for  the  thoroughness  of  his  understanding  of 
the  ways  of  the  inhabitants. 

Redolent  of  the  country-side  as  the  atmosphere  of  the 
comedy  may  be,  there  is  something  foreign  in  the  motive 
of  the  main  story.  While  the  place  is  unmistakably  Eng- 
land, and  while  the  characters  have  the  full  flavor  of  its 
soil,  while  their  nationality  is  never  dubious,  the  action 
in  which  they  are  involved  is  un-English  and  Italianate. 
The  double  intrigue  of  FalstafF  with  Mrs.  Ford  and  Mrs. 
Page  was,  of  course,  possible  in  England  as  anywhere 
else,  but  it  was  not  characteristically  English;  and  the 
violent  jealousy  of  Ford  is  equally  uncharacteristic.  Sev- 
eral of  the  arbitrary  devices  which  serve  to  make  up  the 
plot  are  taken  over  bodily  from  one  or  another  of  the 


134        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

fertile  Italian  story-tellers  who  continued  the  tradition 
of  Boccaccio,  artful  in  narrating  the  stratagems  and 
treasons  of  amorous  misadventure.  It  is  from  a  common 
source  in  one  of  these  collections  of  ingenious  intrigues 
that  Shakspere  and  Moliere  borrowed  the  same  situation, 
— Falstaff  innocently  babbling  to  Ford  about  Mrs.  Ford 
as  Horace  unwittingly  betrays  himself  and  Agnes  to 
Arnolphe.  There  is  in  this  play  of  Shakspere's  a  use  of 
sheer  practical  joking,  and  of  tricks  recoiling  on  the  head 
wherein  they  are  hatched,  which  recalls  the  'Etourdi,' 
perhaps  the  most  Italian  of  all  Moliere's  more  farcical 
pieces.  The  English  comedy  also  terminates  in  a  semi- 
.  spectacular  dance,  much  in  the  same  fashion  as  the  French 
'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,  and  'Malade  Imaginaire.' 

It  is  by  this  final  dance  of  the  fairies  that  two  of  three 
ingeniously  complicated  intrigues  are  wound  up.  The 
triplicate  action  includes  the  joke  on  the  Host,  on  Evans 
and  Caius;  and  this  is  over  and  done  with  long  before 
the  final  act,  even  if  we  lack  the  promised  but  possibly 
never-written  scene  in  which  Caius  has  his  revenge.  The 
two  other  actions  present  the  three  wooers  of  sweet  Anne 
Page  and  the  amatory  advances  of  FalstafT  to  the  merry 
wives,  with  the  inordinate  jealousy  of  Ford  and  the  con- 
sequent discomfiture  of  the  predatory  knight.  The  ex- 
position is  excellent,  all  in  action,  bringing  on  the  neces- 
sary characters;  and  by  the  end  of  the  first  act  we  are  in 
the  thick  of  the  plot — of  all  the  plots,  FalstafFs  pursuit 
of  Mrs.  Ford  and  Mrs.  Page,  and  the  threefold  courtship 
of  Mrs.  Page's  daughter  by  Slender  and  Caius  and 
Fenton. 

If  we  may  define  comedy  as  consisting  of  an  action 
caused  by  the  conflict  of  character  with  character,  the 
characters  conditioning  the  action,  and  farce  as  an  action 


THE  FALSTAFF  PLAYS  135 

which  conditions  the  characters  and  forces  them  to  fit 
as  best  they  can  into  the  prescribed  situations — then 
the  'Merry  Wives'  must  be  taken  as  farce  rather  than 
comedy,  since  the  plot  conditions  all  the  characters, 
especially  Falstaff,  and  forces  them  into  situations  they 
would  not  seek  of  their  own  free  will.  But  although  the 
action  is  artificial  and  arbitrary,  the  piece  is  lifted  above 
the  ordinary  level  of  farce  by  the  amplitude  of  the  char- 
acters. They  may  be  constrained  by  the  playwright, 
now  and  again,  to  do  things  foreign  to  their  natural  in- 
stincts, but  they  are  all  of  them  humorously  real  and 
realistically  humorous. 

The  framework  of  a  frank  farce  is  here  filled  out  by 
creatures  actually  alive.  And  the  action  itself  is  inge- 
niously invented  and  adroitly  contrived;  it  moves  swiftly, 
with  a  satisfactory  sequence  of  amusing  situations.  Per- 
haps because  it  is  a  farce-comedy  of  contemporary  man- 
ners, lacking  in  romantic  remoteness,  it  is  the  least  poetic 
of  all  Shakspere's  comedies;  if  not  the  most  prosaic,  it 
has  the  fewest  lines  of  actual  verse.  And  at  this  period 
of  Shakspere's  development  as  a  poet  he  had  already  an 
almost  unerring  instinct  in  the  appropriate  employment 
of  prose  or  verse. 

The  mechanism  of  the  plot  works  smoothly,  but  only  at 
the  cost  of  FalstafF.  To  fit  him  into  the  prescribed  in- 
trigue he  has  to  be  sadly  shorn  of  his  strength.  It  was  a 
sorry  day  for  Sir  John  when  he  left  Gadshill  for  Windsor. 
To  make  the  action  what  its  author  had  foreordained 
FalstafF  has  to  be  deprived  of  his  indefatigable  resource- 
fulness and  to  be  hoodwinked  at  the  very  moment  when 
he  is  striving  to  hoodwink  others.  At  times  FalstafF  is 
made  to  appear  almost  wilful  in  self-deception,  poking 
his    head   wantonly   into   traps   that   a   dull   man   could 


136         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

scarcely  have  failed  to  suspect.  He  is  compelled  by  the 
author  to  send  identical  letters  by  the  same  messenger 
to  two  women  whom  he  knows  to  be  boon  companions. 
He  blunders  guilelessly  into  pitfall  after  pitfall;  and 
Sir  John  is  not  a  man  without  guile.  The  snare  is  set 
almost  in  sight  of  the  bird,  and  a  wily  old  cock  like 
Falstaff  would  never  have  placed  foot  in  it  even  once, 
and  yet  he  is  netted  twice  and  thrice.  He  lets  himself  be 
deceived  not  merely  by  ordinary  human  beings,  but  also 
by  fairies  of  a  palpable  humanity.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
at  the  end  he  puts  to  himself  the  pertinent  question, 
"Have  I  laid  my  brain  in  the  sun  and  dried  it,  so  that  it 
wants  matter  to  prevent  as  gross  o'erreaching  as  this?" 
The  man  who  is  scorned  and  turned  into  ridicule  by 
Mrs.  Ford  and  Mrs.  Page,  and  who  is  tricked  by  Ford 
himself,  is  no  longer  the  man  whom  we  have  seen  coaxing 
the  irate  and  injured  Mrs.  Quickly  to  sell  her  precious 
possessions  for  his  benefit.  He  may  retain  his  humor  of 
speech  with  its  contagious  gaiety,  but  his  wits  are  not 
what  they  had  been,  for  he  is  now  a  butt  and  only  a 
butt,  the  very  Falstaff  who  had  been  infinitely  masterful 
in  contriving  stratagems  against  others.  Much  of  the 
heartiness  of  his  fun  is  taken  from  him  when  he  whose 
prime  function  it  is  to  fool  others  is  himself  unceasingly 
befooled.  In  the  chronicle-plays  we  laugh  with  him  at 
least  as  often  as  we  laugh  at  him;  but  in  the  comedy- 
farce  we  can  only  laugh  at  him.  Nor  is  this  the  worst, 
for  we  are  forced  to  sit  idly  by  while  manifold  indignities 
are  heaped  upon  his  huge  bulk.  Beatings  and  buck- 
baskets  full  of  foul  linen  are  not  fit  punishments  for  the 
fat  knight,  whom  we  cannot  help  liking  despite  all  his 
foibles.  We  hold  him  in  affection  in  spite  of  his  evil 
life,  and  we  feel  that  he  is  superior  to  gross  defilements 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  137 

like  these.  Even  if  he  has  deserved  them,  they  seem 
to  us  out  of  keeping  with  his  generous  humor;  and  we 
are  ready  to  declare  that  for  once  Shakspere  has  been 
unfair  to  one  of  his  creatures — very  much  as  Cervantes 
degraded  the  lean  knight  who  is  his  sad  hero  by  the 
pranks  of  which  Don  Quixote  is  the  victim  in  the  second 
part  of  the  novel. 

It  has  been  suggested  by  Professor  Gummere  that  in 
the  physical  misadventures  of  the  two  knights,  as  in  the 
later  indignities  put  upon  Parson  Adams,  we  can  perceive 
a  survival  of  the  earlier  communal  humor,  when  the 
laughter  of  the  tribe  was  most  easily  aroused  by  actual 
suffering,  and  when  even  torture  wTas  accepted  as  mirth- 
provoking.  The  Elizabethan  playgoer  had  nerves  which 
were  not  enfeebled  by  sympathy  for  man  or  beast.  And 
here  again,  in  the  joyous  '  Merry  Wives,'  as  earlier  in  the 
gruesome  'Titus  Andronicus,'  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
gulf  which  yawns  between  the  Elizabethans  and  our- 
selves. Here  once  more  we  are  compelled  to  confess 
that  Shakspere,  modern  as  he  may  be  in  so  many  man- 
ifestations, is  often  semi-medieval  in  his  attitude.  We 
shall  discover  another  instance  of  this  when  we  come  to 
consider  his  conception  of  Shylock. 


VII 

The  play  in  which  Shylock  appears  was  probably 
produced  earlier  even  than  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  and  be- 
fore all  the  Falstaff  pieces;  but  its  consideration  here  may 
be  postponed  so  that  it  can  be  grouped  with  the  other 
romantic-comedies  compounded  in  accord  with  the  same 
formula.  Before  dealing  with  this  group  of  romantic- 
comedies  there  is  yet  another  of  Shakspere's  farces  to  be 


1 38         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

dealt  with,  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew,'  which  seems  to 
have  been  written  before  'As  you  Like  it/  Farce  brings 
out  the  humor  of  situation  rather  than  the  humor  of 
character,  and  it  appeals  to  the  emotions  of  surprise 
rather  than  to  the  emotions  of  recognition.  It  is  there- 
fore held  to  be  inferior  to  true  comedy,  but  it  is  in  itself 
a  legitimate  kind  of  play,  filling  a  niche  of  its  own, 
provoking  laughter   for  its  own  sake. 

Doubts  have  been  cast  upon  Shakspere's  authorship  of 
this  farce,  owing  largely  to  the  fact  that  its  workmanship 
seems  altogether  unworthy  of  him  at  this  period  of  his 
development  as  a  dramatist.  If  it  is  wholly  his,  we  can 
see  in  it  another  instance  of  his  willingness  to  economize 
invention,  since  we  know  that  it  is  a  reworking  of  an 
earlier  piece,  called  the  'Taming  of  a  Shrew.'  To  the 
main  plot,  taken  over  bodily  from  the  older  play,  Shak- 
spere  adds  an  ingeniously  complicated  underplot  bor- 
rowed from  Gascoigne's  version  of  a  comic  drama  by 
Ariosto.  The  author  of  the  'Taming  of  a  Shrew'  had 
already  drawn  upon  Gascoigne's  adaptation;  and  Shak- 
spere,  as  was  his  wont,  goes  back  to  the  remoter  source 
of  his  immediate  source,  just  as  he  had  done  in  the 
Henry  V  histories  when  he  returned  to  Holinshed,  from 
whose  chronicles  the  writer  of  the  'Famous  Victories'  had 
already  drawn. 

Not  only  has  Shakspere  derived  the  adroit  complexity 
of  his  subordinate  story  from  the  Italian;  he  has  also 
borrowed  types  from  the  comedy-of-masks,  one  minor 
character  being  designated  only  as  a  Pedant,  quite  in  ac- 
cord with  the  Bolognese  tradition,  and  Grumio  being  once 
spoken  of  as  a  Pantaloon  (which  is  the  English  for  the 
Venetian  Pantaleone).  On  the  other  hand,  Grumio  and 
Tranio  and  Biondello  are  simply  the  clowns  of  the  earlier 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  139 

English  drama,  the  equivalents  of  Costard  and  Dull, 
Launce  and  Speed.  Most  of  the  other  characters  are  also 
merely  outlined  without  any  psychologic  subtlety.  Kate 
is  a  fiery  termagant  who  is  a  true  woman  at  heart,  over- 
come at  last  not  so  much  by  the  mere  physical  violence  of 
Petruchio  as  by  the  masterfulness  of  her  arbitrary  mate, 
sweeping  all  before  him  by  sheer  force  of  will,  by  the 
brute  force  of  a  domineering  masculinity.  Shakspere  has 
here  handled  the  medieval  theme  of  wife-taming  by 
boisterous  vigor,  with  no  attempt  to  disguise  its  crude 
cruelty.  His  attitude  is  frankly  archaic,  and  he  makes 
little  effort  to  bestow  plausibility  on  the  plot  he  has 
chosen  to  treat.  He  takes  this  story  as  he  finds  it;  he 
reinforces  its  construction;  he  complicates  it  with  fresh 
incidents;  and  he  rattles  through  it  with  irresistible  ve- 
locity. 

Petruchio's  motives  are  sordid  in  agreeing  to  wed  Kath- 
erine,  and  Katherine's  temper  is  inexcusable.  Nowhere 
does  Shakspere  suggest  any  genuine  affection  of  the  bride- 
groom for  the  bride;  nor  does  he  adequately  account  for 
the  regard  which  the  wife  at  last  displays  toward  her 
husband.  The  treatment  of  motive  and  of  character  is 
sketchy  and  superficial,  although  we  can  perceive  that 
Shakspere  wrote  with  obvious  gusto  the  scenes  between 
the  irreconcilable  hero  and  heroine.  The  conflict  of 
these  two  personalities  is  the  core  of  the  play;  it  may  be 
monotonous,  and  perhaps  this  is  why  Shakspere  artfully 
relieved  it  with  the  more  varied  episodes  which  present 
the  several  wooers  of  Katherine's  younger  sister,  thus 
diluting  the  strong  scenes  of  the  main  story,  scenes  which 
still  make  the  play  effective  on  the  stage,  even  if  it  reveals 
its  thinness  in  the  study. 

Andrew  Lang,  considering  the  play  from  the  purely  lit- 


i4o        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

erary  point  of  view,  declared  that  "the  central  idea  is  an 
incredible  old  popular  joke,"  and  decided  that  "in  wit, 
poetry  and  desirable  characters,  the  comedy  is  sadly  to 
seek.,,  And  in  the  library  no  other  opinion  is  possible. 
Except  the  'Comedy  of  Errors'  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew' 
is  the  most  completely  farcical  of  all  Shakspere's  plays, 
external  in  its  action,  flimsy  in  its  character-drawing, 
deficient  in  reality,  theatrical  rather  than  dramatic.  It 
has  none  of  the  rich  mellow  humor  of  Falstaff  and  none 
of  the  brilliant  and  blithesome  wit  of  Portia  and  Rosalind. 
These  defects  are  undeniable  where  the  play  is  only  read; 
but  they  do  not  spoil  its  theatrical  effectiveness  when  it 
is  acted.  As  soon  as  Katherine  and  Petruchio  appear  be- 
fore us  in  the  flesh,  we  are  instantly  caught  up  by  their 
whirlwind  wooing;  we  want  to  follow  the  course  of  their 
matrimonial  combat;  we  await  the  successive  stages  of 
the  comic  strife  with  appreciative  expectancy.  We  may 
not  be  convinced,  but  we  are  provoked  to  laughter.  And 
a  purely  theatrical  criticism  must  confess  that  the  plot  is 
well  handled,  lacking  as  it  may  be  in  refinement  and  in 
depth.  The  exposition  is  swift,  clear  and  enticing;  we 
are  made  acquainted  with  the  desire  of  the  several  suitors 
to  marry  Bianca  and  with  her  father's  insistence  that  the 
younger  daughter  shall  not  wed  before  the  elder;  and 
when  Kate  bursts  in  upon  us,  a  splendid  animal  in  a 
splendid  rage,  we  wonder  what  manner  of  man  will  be 
venturesome  enough  to  undertake  her  conquest.  And 
from  this  lively  exposition  the  play  moves  forward  with 
unflagging  vivacity  to  its  necessary  conclusion. 

One  of  the  evidences  of  the  immaturity  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama  was  the  use  of  the  kindred  devices  of  the 
play-within-the-play  (as  in  'Hamlet'),  and  of  the  induc- 
tion, a  slight  external  framework  inclosing  the  main  play. 


THE   FALSTAFF  PLAYS  ,4i 

These  devices  are  not  unlike  the  unrelated  stories  injected 
into  longer  novels  (as  in  'Don  Quixote'  and  'Tom  Jones'), 
the  authors  not  yet  knowing  quite  how  to  get  the  utmost 
out  of  their  material  without  these  external  aids.  This 
trick  is  carried  to  its  ultimate  extreme  in  the  'Arabian 
Nights,'  where  wTe  have  story  within  story  within  story, 
"laborious  orient  ivory  sphere  in  sphere."  There  was 
an  induction  in  the  earlier  'Taming  of  a  Shrew,'  which 
showed  how  a  drunkard  fell  asleep,  how  he  was  befooled 
by  being  told  he  was  a  man  of  high  degree,  and  how 
he  was  then  amused  by  a  play  in  which  a  shrew  was 
tamed,  whereupon  he  goes  home  to  apply  this  method  to 
his  own  wife.  Shakspere  uses  the  beginning  of  this  to 
open  his  own  play,  but  he  casts  away  the  end,  leaving  us 
no  clue  to  the  conduct  of  Sly  after  he  is  disabused.  When 
the  Katherine-and-Petruchio  story  is  about  to  be  shown 
the  stage-direction  reads  "enter  the  drunkard  above," 
that  is,  in  the  gallery  over  the  back  of  the  stage,  where  he 
could  look  down  on  the  play  supposed  to  be  presented 
for  his  amusement.  It  has  been  ingeniously  suggested 
that  Shakspere  discarded  the  later  scenes  of  the  induc- 
tion, and  withdrew  Sly  from  the  gallery  above  so  that  it 
might  be  free,  when  the  time  came,  for  the  Pedant  to 
look  out  of  the  window. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ROMANTIC-COMEDIES 
I 

In  most  of  the  plays,  grave  and  gay,  which  Shakspere 
had  written  prior  to  the  '  Merchant  of  Venice'  we  can 
perceive  evidence  that  he  had  not  yet  found  the  existing 
dramatic  formulas  entirely  adequate  for  his  full  artistic 
self-expression.  But  we  can  see  also  that  the  period  of 
experiment  is  drawing  to  an  end  and  that  he  has  com- 
pleted his  apprenticeship.  He  has  mastered  the  mys- 
tery of  exposition;  he  has  learned  the  value  of  contrast;  he 
has  taught  himself  how  to  build  up  an  action,  intensifying 
its  interest,  scene  by  scene,  as  it  rises  to  its  culmination; 
and  he  has  discovered  that  he  need  not  invent  characters 
by  the  aid  of  fantasy,  since  the  world  about  him  proffered 
countless  men  and  women  for  his  imagination  to  trans- 
figure. He  has  built  the  artfully  articulated  plot  of  his 
first  great  tragedy,  '  Romeo  and  Juliet,'  and  he  has 
created  his  greatest  comic  character,  Falstaff.  The  com- 
position of  a  dozen  plays  of  varying  types  has  shown  him 
how  he  could  best  do  what  he  wanted  to  do.  He  has 
entered  already  on  the  period  of  assured  mastery  and  of 
exalted  ambition,  the  period  to  which  belong  his  supreme 
masterpieces — in  tragedy,  ' Hamlet,'  'Othello'  and  'Mac- 
beth'; in  comedy,  the  'Merchant  of  Venice,'  'Much  Ado,' 
'As  you  Like  it'  and  'Twelfth  Night'. 

The    earliest    of    these    comedies,    the    'Merchant    of 

Venice,'  had  been  written  before  Falstaff  had  come  into 

142 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  143 

being;  and  the  latest,  'Twelfth  Night,'  was  produced  only 
a  little  earlier  than  ' Hamlet.'  All  four  of  them  were  ap- 
parently composed  in  the  final  half-decade  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  In  their  structure  they  are  curiously 
alike;  they  abound  in  pairs  of  heroines  sharply  con- 
trasted, in  love  at  first  sight,  in  mistakes  of  identity,  and 
in  disguisings  which  deceive  the  characters  and  which  de- 
light the  spectators.  They  have  each  of  them  for  the 
center  of  interest  a  tale  of  true  love  that  ran  smoothly 
for  the  most  part,  although  not  without  obstacles  and 
obstructions.  And  this  central  story  of  young  lovers 
meeting  and  mating  in  the  springtime  of  their  happy 
lives  is  supported  by  a  vigorous  underplot  which  seems  at 
times  almost  about  to  stiffen  into  tragedy.  The  high- 
est type  of  pure  comedy,  as  we  discover  it  in  Moliere,  can 
be  defined  as  a  humorous  play,  the  action  of  which  is  the 
inevitable  result  of  the  clash  of  character  on  character,  the 
story  being  what  it  is  solely  because  the  characters  are 
what  they  are.  This  definition  does  not  fit  these  four 
charming  comedies  of  Shakspere,  since  his  stories  are 
not  strictly  caused  by  his  chief  characters,  who  are  at 
times  almost  passive  under  the  pressure  of  the  arbitrary 
subplot  which  supplies  the  necessary  dramatic  strength. 
These  subplots  are  in  themselves  romanticist,  even  if 
Shakspere  has  seen  fit  to  ennoble  them  with  real  char- 
acters; they  are  often  archaic  in  the  unreality  of  their 
motives;  and  they  are  tolerable  to-day  only  because  we 
are  willing  to  make  believe. 

In  fact,  these  four  comedies  are  frankly  medieval  in 
their  devices,  and  they  are  renascence  only  in  the  char- 
acters who  are  subject  to  these  devices.  The  persons  still 
seem  to  us  modern  enough  because  they  are  most  of  them 
eternally  true  to  life,  whereas  the  stories  themselves  are 


i44         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

remote,  outworn,  and  even  in  some  measure  absurd. 
Shakspere  asks  us  to  accept  tales  which  are  no  longer 
acceptable,  and  he  wins  our  consent  because  of  the  beau- 
tiful veracity  of  his  chief  characters.  It  is  as  if  he  were 
requesting  us  to  permit  the  artificiality  of  the  tale  itself 
on  his  promise  to  carry  on  this  tale  by  veritable  human 
beings  who  shall  obey  the  strictest  logic  of  life.  In  the 
'Merchant  of  Venice,'  for  example,  the  pound-of-flesh 
story  and  the  story  of  the  three  caskets  are  hopelessly  in- 
conceivable in  any  world  that  ever  was;  but  Portia  is 
perfectly  true  to  life  as  we  know  it,  and  so  is  Shylock. 
We  can  enjoy  the  delightful  vision  of  Portia  set  over 
against  the  sinister  profile  of  Shylock  only  if  we  are  ready 
to  receive  as  real  the  transcendent  unreality  of  the  inci- 
dents which  bring  these  two  characters  together.  We  can 
get  our  full  measure  of  enjoyment  out  of  the  merry  war 
between  Beatrice  and  Benedick  only  if  we  are  willing  for 
the  moment  to  close  our  eyes  to  the  arrant  impossibility 
of  the  wicked  scheme  by  which  the  marriage  of  Hero  and 
Claudio  is  broken  off.  In  the  two  later  comedies,  'As 
you  Like  it'  and  'Twelfth  Night,'  the  semi-tragic  sub- 
plot is  less  important — indeed,  in  the  last  of  the  four  its 
place  is  usurped  by  a  humorous  understory. 

One  of  the  ways  by  which  Shakspere  subtly  wins  our 
attention  for  a  tale  that  we  might  otherwise  reject  is  to 
lay  the  scene  of  all  four  of  these  romantic-comedies  in  a 
realm  of  unreality,  an  undiscovered  country  of  dreams. 
He  may  call  this  Venice  or  Messina,  Illyria  or  the  Forest  of 
Arden;  but  he  avails  himself  of  these  geographic  expres- 
sions merely  to  attain  the  effect  of  remoteness,  the  illusion 
of  a  no-man's-land  afar  off,  a  strange  place  where  the 
strangest  things  may  happen,  and  where  the  inhabitants 
are  not  fettered  by  the  sordid  bonds  of  every-day  ex- 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  145 

istence.  The  Forest  of  Arden,  in  which  snakes  glide  and 
lions  roam,  can  be  contiguous  only  to  the  principality 
of  Zenda,  not  far  from  the  town  of  Weissnichtwo.  Its 
boundaries  may  not  be  traceable  on  any  actual  map,  and 
yet  a  joyous  host  of  recognizable  human  beings  wander 
at  will  through  its  glades  and  explore  its  distant  recesses. 
Skeptical  geographers  have  even  ventured  to  surmise  that 
it  may  once  have  been  incorporated  in  the  land  of  opera- 
comique — often  called  La  Scribie,  after  its  explorer,  Scribe 
— a  country  fair  to  see,  where  lovers  undergo  easy  trials 
and  where  all  the  laws  are  promulgated  for  the  sole 
benefit  of  the  playwright.  Yet  this  region  of  romance 
cannot  be  very  far  from  the  England  of  Elizabeth,  since 
most  of  the  inhabitants  have  English  for  their  native 
tongue  and  are  ordered  by  English  manners  and  customs. 
Touchstone  and  Adam,  Dogberry  and  Verges,  Sir  Toby 
Belch,  Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek  and  the  incomparable 
Maria — all  these  live  and  move  and  have  their  being  in 
their  native  land,  the  very  island  where  Bottom  was  at 
home,  though  he  may  have  supposed  himself  to  abide 
at  Athens,  and  where  the  Nurse  was  born  who  acted  as 
go-between  in  Verona. 

II 

To  us  nowadays  the  central  personage  of  the  'Merchant 
of  Venice'  is  not  the  somber  Antonio,  who  gives  the  play 
its  title,  nor  the  lovely  Portia,  but  the  sinister  Shylock. 
We  go  to  the  theater  to  see  a  great  actor  in  this  great  part; 
and  Macready,  followed  by  Lawrence  Barrett,  went  so 
far  as  to  cut  the  piece  down  to  a  Shylock-play  in  three 
acts,  ending  with  the  trial-scene.  But  this  is  plainly  a 
betrayal  of  Shakspere's  intent.     In  his  mind  the  central 


146        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

personage  is  indisputably  Portia.  The  play  opens  with 
talk  about  the  lady  of  Belmont;  and  it  ends  at  Belmont, 
with  the  lady  about  to  begin  her  life  of  wedded  bliss. 
"Take  away  Belmont  and  the  drama  will  not  stand," 
M.  Jusserand  has  pointed  out.  "Belmont  is  fairy-land; 
everything  there  is  young,  beautiful,  radiant  and  charm- 
ing; from  there  can  come  only  happiness,  joy  and  mar- 
vels." 

For  all  his  importance  to  us  Shylock  appears  only  in 
five  scenes,  and  not  once  in  the  fifth  act.  He  comes  into 
the  play  only  that  his  hard  feeling  toward  Antonio  may 
bring  about  the  deadly  peril  in  which  the  merchant  is 
involved,  so  that  the  warm-hearted  and  quick-witted 
Portia  may  extricate  her  husband's  benefactor  and  tri- 
umphantly confute  the  evil-minded  usurer.  Even  imme- 
diately after  the  tension  of  the  trial-scene  the  disguised 
heroine  claims  from  her  husband  the  ring  she  has  given 
him,  simply  to  provide  material  for  the  fifth  act,  a  comic 
complication  being  necessary  to  carry  on  the  comedy  a 
little  longer.  Without  this  amusing  business  of  the  ring 
the  final  scenes  would  be  void  of  matter.  Portia  lingers 
in  our  sight  long  after  Shylock  has  gone  out,  disgraced 
and  degraded;  and  she  had  been  introduced  to  us  before 
we  were  allowed  to  lay  eyes  on  the  scheming  money- 
lender. The  play  is  a  comedy  in  its  blithesome  tone;  it 
is  a  tale  of  true  lovers,  three  couples  of  them;  and  the  evil 
plot  of  the  sordid  wretch  whom  Portia  defeats  with  the 
weapons  of  the  law  is  scarcely  more  than  a  grave  in- 
cident introduced  to  intensify  our  interest  in  the  love- 
story.  The  temper  of  the  piece  is  not  that  of  tragedy; 
and  its  sentiment  does  not  deepen  into  tragic  passion.  Its 
appeal  is  primarily  to  eternal  youth,  which  loves  a  lover, 
and  which  likes  a  love-story  that  is  almost  a  fairy-tale. 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  147 

There  is  external  evidence  that  Shakspere  was  probably 
here  remaking  an  earlier  piece  in  which  the  pound  of  flesh 
and  the  three  caskets  had  already  been  combined;  and 
internal  evidence  confirms  this.  Very  often  Shakspere  is 
at  his  best  when  he  is  improving  a  ready-made  play.  This 
is  exactly  what  he  was  to  do  with  '  Hamlet,'  the  immediate 
source  of  which  is  also  lost.  He  takes  the  earlier  author's 
plot  and  makes  it  his  own;  and  he  also  makes  it  over  to 
suit  himself.  The  ' Merchant  of  Venice'  is  like  'Hamlet' 
again  in  that  it  is  just  the  kind  of  play  we  should  expect 
from  Shakspere  at  the  period  when  it  was  produced;  and 
both  plays  as  we  have  them  are  probably  better  than  they 
would  have  been  if  Shakspere  had  not  been  sustained  and 
stimulated  by  the  earlier  pieces.  In  both  of  these  plays, 
the  comedy  and  the  tragedy,  the  invention  of  the  bare 
story  may  be  due  to  an  earlier  playwright;  but  the  con- 
struction must  be  mainly  Shakspere's,  since  it  is  excel- 
lent and  beyond  the  power  of  any  of  his  predecessors. 

In  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  the  two  plots  are  inter- 
twined with  felicitous  dexterity,  the  Shylock  episodes 
being  dealt  with  in  precisely  the  proper  proportion  to 
relieve  and  lift  up  the  Portia  episodes.  The  exposition  is 
admirable;  we  see,  first  of  all,  the  disenchanted  and  large- 
minded  Antonio,  glad  to  help  along  the  wooing  of  the 
ardent  Bassanio,  but  already  possessed  by  a  presentiment 
of  impending  calamity;  then  we  are  carried  to  Belmont  to 
get  acquainted  with  the  woman  Bassanio  wishes  to  woo; 
and  only  after  attention  has  been  called  to  these  young 
lovers,  and  only  after  we  have  been  allowed  to  foresee 
their  ultimate  union,  does  the  repellent  Shylock  come  into 
view  to  propose  his  merry  bond  with  its  fatal  forfeit. 
Thereafter  we  are  witnesses  of  the  preparations  for  Jes- 
sica's elopement,  whereby  she  is  to  despoil  her  father;  it  is 


148         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

this  theft  of  his  daughter  and  of  his  ducats  which  is  to 
intensify  Shylock's  vindictive  bitterness  against  all  Chris- 
tians and  so  to  sharpen  his  purpose  when  the  bond  is  not 
met  on  the  appointed  day.  And  in  alternate  scenes  with 
these  we  behold  the  choosing  of  the  caskets  by  the  three 
suitors  in  turn,  Bassanio  at  last  making  the  happy  choice, 
whereupon  Portia  surrenders  herself  to  him  in  a  speech  of 
noble  tenderness,  heartfelt  and  feminine.  Then  we  dis- 
cover that  Gratiano  and  Nerissa  have  also  come  to  a 
swift  understanding.  Suddenly,  without  warning,  while 
the  four  lovers  are  in  the  first  flush  of  happiness,  there 
comes  the  news  of  Antonio's  inability  to  meet  the  bond. 
The  trial-scene  is  thus  prepared  for — to  be  handled  when 
it  comes  at  last  with  a  superb  crescendo  of  dramatic 
effect.  And  in  the  final  passages  of  the  play  Shylock  is 
forgotten  and  the  three  couples  are  light-hearted  lovers 
again,  billing  and  cooing  in  the  molten  moonlight. 

The  center  of  interest  is  ever  the  superb  Portia,  to  be 
compared  only  with  Rosalind,  also  a  creature  of  joy, 
radiant  and  wholesome,  born  to  be  happy.  Portia  is  the 
earliest  of  Shakspere's  marvelous  heroines  of  comedy,  the 
older  sister  of  Beatrice  and  Rosalind  and  Viola.  They 
are  sisters  truly,  with  a  strong  family  likeness,  yet  not 
twins,  any  pair  of  them,  for  they  are  as  unlike  as 
sisters  often  are.  Portia  is  frolic-loving  yet  lofty  of  soul; 
she  is  mischievous  yet  dignified;  a  true  woman,  with 
abundant  fervor  and  with  no  lack  of  humor.  What  has 
Bassanio  done  to  deserve  a  wife  so  wonderful?  He  has 
wooed  her,  for  one  thing,  and  she  has  opportunity  to  find 
out  in  him  merits  disclosed  only  to  her.  Fit  companion 
for  the  joyous  Portia  is  the  joyous  Nerissa;  and  joyous 
also  is  Jessica,  for  whose  unfilial  robbery  of  her  father 
Shakspere  has  never  a  word  of  blame.     Like  Portia  and 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  149 

like  Nerissa,  Jessica  was  lovely  and  she  was  beloved;  and 
in  a  comedy  of  many  wooings  her  wanton  thefts  from 
her  outlawed  father  do  not  demand  our  condemnation. 
After  all,  who  is  this  father  whom  Jessica  despoiled  ?  Only 
Shylock,  whom  we  have  had  good  reason  to  hate  and 
whom  we  have  seen  scorned  and  humbled  in  the  dust. 
We  may  have  feared  the  evil  creature,  but  only  for  a  little 
space;  the  play  is  a  comedy,  after  all;  and  even  if  we 
have  dreaded  Shylock  we  have  laughed  at  him  in  the  end, 
even  as  we  despised  him. 

To  the  Elizabethans,  strange  as  this  may  seem  to  us, 
madness  was  often  comic,  and  so  was  rage,  which  is  a  less 
intense  madness.  Early  in  the  medieval  drama  Herod, 
with  his  effervescent  violence,  had  become  a  humorous 
character,  at  whom  the  audience  was  expected  to  roar. 
Shakspere  means  his  spectators  to  hate  Shylock  and  also 
to  laugh  at  him.  The  dramatist  adroitly  commingles  the 
pathetic  appeal  which  Shylock  makes  to  us  moderns  with 
seemingly  incongruous  comic  effects.  Just  after  Shylock 
speaks  of  the  turquoise  ring  which  he  had  of  Leah  when 
he  was  a  bachelor  he  is  made  to  declare  that  he  would 
not  have  parted  with  it  for  "a  wilderness  of  monkeys." 
Shylock  is  the  villain  of  the  play,  no  doubt,  but  he  is  a 
villain  both  sternly  tragic  and  grimly  comic,  exposed  to 
constant  derision  and  jeered  at  unfeelingly  by  Gratiano 
at  the  very  moment  of  his  abject  defeat.  Shakspere  is 
incessant  in  forcing  us  to  see  all  the  evil  in  Shylock;  his 
very  servant  is  made  to  speak  against  him,  and  his  only 
daughter  is  glad  to  escape  from  his  hated  house.  Before 
he  comes  into  view  to  lament  his  ducats  and  his  daughter 
Salanio  has  already  informed  the  audience  that  the  old 
man  has  made  himself  a  laughing-stock  to  the  rabble. 
And   when   Shylock   himself  appears,  wrought   up   to   a 


ISO        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

pitch  of  frenzy,  he  moved  the  contemporary  playgoers 
to  ribald  mirth,  without  in  any  way  detracting  from 
their  detestation  of  the  wicked  usurer  who  has  met  only 
his  just  deserts. 

That  this  was  Shakspere's  intent  will  seem  indis- 
putable to  all  who  remember  Marlowe's  'Jew  of  Malta,' 
and  who  can  put  themselves  back  into  the  Elizabethan 
attitude  toward  Jews  and  toward  usury,  a  most  abhor- 
rent trade,  denounced  by  law  and  condemned  by  public 
opinion.  But,  like  many  another  great  artist,  Shakspere 
builded  better  than  he  knew,  and  we  can  find  in  his  por- 
trayal of  Shylock  much  that  he  may  not  have  meant  to 
put  there.  To  the  men  of  the  sixteenth  century  Shylock 
may  have  been  only  a  comic  villain;  to  us  in  the  twentieth 
century  he  is  a  supremely  pathetic  figure,  with  whom  we 
have  even  a  certain  sympathy.  We  cannot  help  feeling 
that  scant  justice  has  been  measured  out  to  him.  Unfair 
as  Shakspere  often  is  in  his  artful  preparation  to  force  us 
to  detest  Shylock  and  to  despise  him,  at  other  times  the 
great  poet  is  fair  enough  in  making  us  see  the  Jew's  griev- 
ances and  provocations.  Antonio  has  treated  Shylock 
shamefully;  we  perceive  this  now,  although  Shakspere's 
contemporaries  probably  approved  of  the  merchant's  inex- 
cusable brutality.  And  in  the  speech  in  which  Shylock 
asks,  "Hath  not  a  Jew  eyes?"  Shakspere  allows  the  old 
man  to  speak  for  himself  for  once,  to  speak  out  of  the 
fullness  of  his  own  heart,  to  speak  for  his  whole  race. 

As  it  was  against  the  law  of  England,  from  Edward  I 
to  Cromwell,  for  any  Jew  to  reside  in  England,  it  is  dimly 
possible  that  Shakspere  himself  had  never  laid  eyes  on 
an  actual  Hebrew;  and  yet  this  is  most  unlikely,  since 
we  know  that  the  law  was  not  strictly  enforced.  At  all 
events,  it  is  not  probable  that  Shakspere  could  have  had 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  151 

any  intimate  knowledge  of  Hebrew  characteristics;  and 
this  makes  his  subtle  understanding  of  Shylock  all  the 
more  marvelous.  Brandes,  himself  a  Hebrew,  has  drawn 
attention  to  the  "instinct  of  genius  with  which  Shak- 
spere  has  seized  upon  and  emphasized  what  is  peculiarly 
Jewish  in  Shylock's  culture,"  drawing  his  language  from 
the  Old  Testament,  and  having  in  commerce  "his  only 
point  of  contact  with  the  civilization  of  later  times." 
Brandes  also  notes  as  racial  Shylock's  insistence  upon  the 
letter  of  the  law,  and  the  way  in  which  his  ardent  passion 
employs  "images  and  parables  in  the  service  of  a  curiously 
sober  rationalism."  As  a  result  of  this  insight,  and  by 
sheer  force  of  his  instinctive  genius,  Shakspere,  appar- 
ently meaning  to  set  before  us  a  villain  akin  to  Marlowe's 
Barabbas,  has  left  us  a  genuine  human  being,  not  a 
threatening  silhouette  of  black  evil,  but  a  rounded  char- 
acter which  we  can  approach  from  various  angles.  Be- 
cause of  this  inherent  (if  unintended)  humanity,  Shylock 
has  now  usurped  the  central  place  in  the  play.  The  piece 
that  Shakspere  meant  for  a  comedy  has  changed  color 
before  our  eyes  until  it  looms  up  as  almost  tragic  in  the 
overthrow  of  a  powerful  personality.  The  comic  aspects 
of  Shylock  have  disappeared  from  our  modern  vision, 
and  the  pathetic  interest  of  the  desolate  figure  is  now 
most  obvious.  The  transformation  of  the  feelings  of  the 
audience  has  compelled  a  transformation  of  the  method 
of  the  actors  who  may  now  be  intrusted  with  the  part; 
and  we  find  Sir  Henry  Irving,  for  example,  writing  to 
Miss  Ellen  Terry:  "Shylock  was  a  ferocity — there's  no 
doubt  about  it;  but  I  cannot  play  the  part  on  those  lines." 
In  this  transformation  of  Shylock  we  have  another  illus- 
tration of  the  old  saying  that  talent  does  what  it  can, 
while  genius  does  what  it  must. 


152        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


III 

In  'Much  Ado  about  Nothing,'  as  in  the  'Merchant  of 
Venice/  the  story  itself  lacks  credibility  from  our  modern 
standpoint.  We  may  even  be  moved  to  call  it  absurd 
in  its  arbitrary  artificiality,  although  we  can  recognize 
that  it  has  the  startling  surprises  which  the  Elizabethan 
audience  delighted  in,  even  if  they  were  not  in  accord 
with  the  logic  of  human  nature.  But  the  play  which 
Shakspere  makes  out  of  the  impossible  story  of  'Much 
Ado'  is  almost  as  well  constructed  as  the  play  he  com- 
pounded out  of  the  equally  impossible  story  of  the  'Mer- 
chant of  Venice.'  Considered  merely  as  stage-plays,  both 
of  these  romantic-comedies  are  marvels  of  dramaturgic 
dexterity.  The  exposition  of  'Much  Ado'  is  as  clear  and 
as  alluring  as  the  exposition  of  the  'Merchant,'  and  we 
are  invited  at  once  to  watch  the  mating  of  Beatrice  and 
Benedick,  two  gay  and  gallant  figures,  probably  already 
in  love  with  each  other  unknown  to  themselves.  We 
may  assume  this  unsuspected  mutual  affection  because 
Shakspere  sets  them  to  quarreling  as  soon  as  they  meet 
before  our  eyes;  and  when  any  young  woman  is  rep- 
resented on  the  stage  quarreling  with  a  young  man 
theatrical  tradition  warrants  the  belief  that  they  must 
be  in  love  with  each  other  or  otherwise  they  would  not 
thus  waste  their  own  time  and  distract  the  attention  of 
the  spectators. 

The  core  of  'Much  Ado'  is  the  coming  together  of 
Beatrice  and  Benedick;  and  the  supporting  semi-tragic 
framework  is  supplied  by  the  scheme  of  the  villains  to 
disgrace  Hero  at  the  altar  just  as  she  is  about  to  be 
wedded  to  Claudio.     This  dark  subplot  Shakspere  treats 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  153 

with  summary  disregard  of  probability;  it  does  not  appear 
to  him  important:  it  is  but  an  accessory  to  the  amatory 
relations  of  Beatrice  and  Benedick.  The  change  of  atti- 
tude which  has  taken  place  among  us  who  speak  English 
has  led  us  to  thrust  forward  Shylock  and  to  see  in  him 
the  central  figure  of  the  piece  in  which  he  was  designed  to 
play  only  a  subordinate  part;  and  in  like  manner  the  in- 
herited Latin  love  of  logic  has  led  the  French  to  insist  that 
Hero  is  really  the  heroine  of  'Much  Ado,'  with  the  result 
that  in  a  translation  (or  rather  adaptation)  of  'Much 
Ado'  acted  in  Paris  toward  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury Beatrice  and  Benedick  were  thrust  into  the  back- 
ground and  deprived  of  their  prominence  by  the  excision 
of  most  of  their  wTit-battles.  Plainly  this  is  contrary  to 
Shakspere's  intent;  it  is  repugnant  to  the  formula  of  the 
special  type  of  romantic-comedy  in  which  he  gives  us  a 
brilliant  love-story  sustained  by  a  semi-tragic  complica- 
tion, sufficient  to  heighten  the  dramatic  intensity,  but 
kept  down  rigorously  to  its  proper  service  as  an  underplot. 
As  the  Bassanio-Portia  story  combines  with  the  Shy- 
lock-Antonio  story  in  the  trial-scene,  so  the  Beatrice-Bene- 
dick story  combines  with  the  Hero-Claudio  story  in  the 
church-scene.  The  combination  is  skilful  enough,  but  it 
is  less  satisfactory  in  'Much  Ado'  than  in  the  'Merchant,' 
because  the  author  has  taught  us  to  hate  Shylock  and 
he  expects  us  not  to  dislike  Claudio,  who  is  made  to 
exhibit  a  callous  and  arrogant  levity,  which  makes  us 
feel  that  Hero  is  well  rid  of  so  despicable  a  husband,  and 
which  makes  us  restive  when  we  behold  later  the  mar- 
riage that  is  patched  up  in  the  final  scene.  "Why  is  it 
that  comedies  always  end  with  a  marriage?"  a  French  wit 
asked,  only  to  answer  bitterly,  "Because  it  is  then  that 
the  tragedy  begins."     The  union  of  the  delicate  Hero  with 


154         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  shallow  Claudio  has  abundant  tragic  possibilities — if 
we  take  it  seriously.  But  this  is  just  what  Shakspere  did 
not  intend.  Hero  and  Claudio  are  ancillary  to  Beatrice 
and  Benedick.  Claudio  insults  Hero  at  the  altar,  so  that 
Beatrice  can  imperiously  bid  Benedick  to  "kill  Claudio/' 
the  full  dramatic  climax  of  the  episode,  the  point  for  which 
the  scene  is  artfully  constructed.  It  is  for  this  direct  ap- 
peal to  Benedick's  affection  for  Beatrice  that  the  carefully 
compounded  plot  has  been  built  up.  At  this  electric  con- 
tact of  these  two  loyal  and  generous  natures  the  flash 
reveals  at  once  their  deeper  passions.  This  is  the  mo- 
ment of  supreme  importance,  and  Shakspere  is  equal  to 
it  when  it  comes,  even  if  he  has  brought  it  about  by 
machinations  not  a  little  fantastic. 

The  vulnerable  elements  of  the  play  are  all  in  the  Hero- 
Claudio  episodes;  and  they  are  not  easily  defensible  ac- 
cording to  our  modern  insistence  upon  plausibility.  We 
do  not  believe  in  Don  John's  frankly  confessed  villainy, 
which  seems  to  us  mere  motiveless  malignity.  We  do 
not  accept  Borachio's  ready  improvisation  of  a  trick  to 
injure  Claudio  by  blackening  Hero,  against  whom  neither 
Borachio  nor  Don  John  has  any  grievance.  We  see  no 
sense  in  the  Priest's  suggestion  that  Hero  shall  follow 
Juliet's  example  and  pretend  to  be  dead.  And  we  do  not 
understand  how  Claudio  can  make  amends  to  the  dead 
Hero  whom  he  has  insulted  by  wedding  a  cousin  of  hers. 
But  what  do  all  these  hesitancies  amount  to?  The  trick 
of  Borachio  is  the  cause  of  Beatrice's  outburst  to  Bene- 
dick; and  his  later  drunkenness  makes  us  acquainted 
with  Dogberry  and  Verges,  for  whose  sake  we  are  willing 
to  pardon  a  host  of  inconsistencies.  With  very  little 
trouble  Shakspere  might  have  removed  these  improba- 
bilities and  made  his  story  completely  credible.     Credi- 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  155 

bility,  however,  was  a  quality  not  demanded  by  the 
Elizabethans  whom  he  was  seeking  to  please;  and  per- 
haps their  preference  was  rather  for  the  illogical  unex- 
pectedness which  annoys  us  nowadays  since  stricter 
standards  of  probability  have  been  established.  Shak- 
spere  does  not  take  the  trouble  to  make  his  work  four- 
square, apparently  because  he  did  not  deem  it  worth 
while,  since  he  has  put  Beatrice  and  Benedick  in  the  fore- 
front of  his  play,  and  it  was  upon  them  that  he  expects 
his  spectators  to  concentrate  their  interest.  Everything 
else  that  might  be  in  the  play  is  accessory  to  this  gay  and 
gallant  couple. 

In  presenting  Beatrice  and  Benedick  at  full  length 
Shakspere  takes  another  step  in  advance,  in  that  he 
reveals  them  to  us  growing  before  our  eyes.  In  all  the 
earlier  plays  the  characters  remain  at  the  end  very  much 
what  they  had  been  at  the  beginning.  But  Beatrice  and 
Benedick  have  been  modified  by  their  experiences,  and  we 
have  seen  them  develop,  just  as  we  are  later  to  see  Mac- 
beth and  Othello  disintegrate  while  we  are  watching 
them.  We  have  in  this  comedy  a  foretaste  of  Shakspere's 
supreme  gift — his  power  of  letting  his  characters  rise  or 
fall  by  force  of  living,  as  a  result  of  the  stress  they  have 
encountered,  of  the  forces  which  they  have  overcome  or 
to  which  they  have  succumbed.  In  a  comedy  this  trans- 
formation is  necessarily  more  superficial  than  in  the  later 
tragedies,  but  here  it  is  plainly  visible. 

As  this  development  of  character  in  the  play  itself 
anticipates  the  later  tragedies,  so  the  characters  of  Bea- 
trice and  Benedick  were  themselves  anticipated  in  the 
brilliant  pair  of  witty  lovers  in  'Love's  Labour's  Lost.' 
What  Shakspere  was  able  only  to  sketch  in  outline  in  the 
early  comedy  he  is  now  able  to  paint  with  a  profusion 


156        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  detail.  Beatrice  and  Benedick  are  both  of  them  set 
on  their  feet  with  effortless  ease;  but  Shakspere  has  de- 
picted Beatrice  with  a  more  affectionate  touch  than  Bene- 
dick, who  is  own  cousin  to  Mercutio,  and  akin  also  to 
Faulconbridge;  he  is  a  fine  figure  of  a  man,  as  ready  with 
his  sword  as  with  his  tongue,  yet  Beatrice  is  a  more  fas- 
cinating personality,  affluently  feminine,  fundamentally 
loyal,  passionate  yet  free  from  sentimentality.  We  may 
admit  that  she  has  a  little  touch  of  Kate  the  shrew, 
although  Benedick  will  be  able,  on  occasion,  to  play 
Petruchio.  Her  spirits  are  forever  overflowing;  she  is 
ever  merry,  and  she  knows  herself  clever,  even  if  she 
may  think  herself  cleverer  than  she  really  is.  At  times 
she  is  a  little  aggressive,  joying  in  verbal  thrust  and  parry. 
Her  tongue  is  sometimes  a  weapon  of  offense;  and  oc- 
casionally her  repartee  is  point-blank,  not  to  call  it  blunt. 
Her  plainness  of  speech,  her  frankness,  her  boldness  are 
Elizabethan;  her  abiding  charm  is  all  her  own,  unaffected 
by  the  changing  years.  "Dear  Lady  Disdain"  is  as 
captivating  to-day  as  she  was  three  centuries  ago.  Age 
cannot  stale  her,  and  the  comedy  in  which  she  appears 
is  kept  fresh  by  her  exuberant  vitality. 

IV 

In  'As  you  Like  it'  the  supporting  underplot  scarcely 
ever  attains  even  the  semi-tragic.  It  is  only  an  induc- 
tion, a  framework  for  the  episodes  in  the  Forest  of  Arden. 
We  have  our  attention  called  to  it  in  the  beginning  of  the 
play  and  again  at  the  end,  but  in  the  middle  of  it  Rosalind 
draws  all  eyes  to  her  and  to  her  lover.  Shakspere  finds 
his  story  not  in  an  earlier  play,  but  in  a  long-winded  and 
pedantic    pastoral    romance.     As    usual    he    handles    his 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  157 

material  with  full  freedom;  he  omits  and  condenses,  he 
rearranges  incidents  and  he  adds  new  characters — Jaques 
and  Touchstone  and  Audrey.  Above  all,  he  heightens 
and  he  brightens  the  tale  he  borrows,  bestowing  a  gener- 
ous humanity  upon  the  traditional  figures  of  the  pastoral 
play,  which  was  an  elaborately  artificial  form.  Perhaps 
he  recalled  the  rustic  scenes  of  Greene's  'Friar  Bacon  and 
Friar  Bungay,'  and  perhaps  he  was  influenced  by  two 
Robin  Hood  pieces  produced  by  rival  companies  only  a 
few  months  earlier  than  'As  you  Like  it.' 

He  does  not  trouble  himself  to  complicate  the  story 
into  a  really  dramatic  plot,  relying  rather  upon  the  con- 
trast of  character  than  upon  the  sharpness  of  a  struggle 
between  contending  desires.  Yet  his  exposition  is  clear 
and  swift.  Orlando  is  posed  before  us  at  once,  strong  of 
body  and  direct  of  will,  manly  and  resolute.  The  ani- 
mosity of  his  elder  brother  is  shown  in  action;  and  we  are 
made  to  feel  the  sense  of  impending  peril,  not  to  be  taken 
very  seriously,  but  none  the  less  plainly  visible.  Then  in 
the  episode  of  the  wrestling  we  behold  the  actual  danger 
from  which  the  young  hero  escapes,  and  we  are  made 
spectators  of  the  love  at  first  sight  of  Rosalind  and  Or- 
lando. After  that  the  banishment  follows  immediately, 
first  of  Orlando,  and  then  of  Rosalind;  and  our  longing 
has  been  awakened  to  behold  their  meeting  later  in  the 
Forest  of  Arden,  where  the  rest  of  the  action  is  to  take 
place.  This  is  the  necessary  introduction,  skilfully  out- 
lined to  arouse  sympathetic  expectancy. 

It  is  to  the  succession  of  episodes  in  the  Forest  of  Ar- 
den that  'As  you  Like  it'  owes  its  abiding  charm,  to  the 
lovely  groves  and  glades  as  well  as  to  the  lovely  beings 
who  range  through  them.  When  we  follow  Orlando  and 
Rosalind  into  that  enchanted  woodland  we  take  a  vaca- 


158         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

tion  from  the  workaday  world  and  we  enter  a  domain  of 
indisputable  happiness,  where  no  one  grieves  deeply  what- 
ever may  befall,  and  where  even  the  banished  are  recon- 
ciled to  their  exile  and  take  life  cheerily,  letting  their 
blithe  hearts  overflow  in  song.  In  this  happiest  of  his 
comedies  Shakspere  invites  us,  so  Andrew  Lang  declared, 
"into  that  ideal  commonwealth  for  which  all  men  in  all 
times  have  sighed:  the  land  of  an  easeful  liberty;  the  life 
natural,  which  has  never  existed  in  nature,  where  there  is 
neither  war  nor  toil,  but  endless  security  and  peace  be- 
neath the  sky  and  the  trees."  It  is  a  forest  akin  to  the 
Sherwood  of  the  old  ballads,  but  inhabited  by  beings  less 
boisterous.  It  is  fragrant  with  the  aroma  of  romance,  an 
enchanted  region  of  unattained  and  restful  delight,  the 
dream  of  lyric  youth. 

Here,  outdoors,  in  the  open  air,  under  the  cloudless  sky, 
while  the  fresh  breeze  blows  across  the  sylvan  spaces 
and  rustles  the  shimmering  tree-tops,  life  fleets  merrily, 
touched  with  tender  sentiment,  and  never  stirred  by  the 
depths  of  passion.  The  atmosphere  may  be  that  of  Vir- 
gilian  eclogue,  but  the  attitude  is  rather  that  of  Horatian 
revery.  The  tone  of  the  comedy  is  that  of  the  most  deli- 
cate "familiar  verse,"  blithe  and  buoyant.  'As  you  Like 
it'  is  in  many  ways  the  most  fanciful  and  the  most  lyric 
of  Shakspere's  plays;  it  is  the  comedy  of  young  love,  as 
'Romeo  and  Juliet'  is  the  tragedy  of  young  love.  It  is 
an  eternal  spring-poem,  set  in  dialogue  and  action  and 
singing  itself  to  its  own  music.  And  yet,  strangely 
enough,  it  has  less  verse  than  almost  any  other  of  Shak- 
spere's plays.  The  exquisite  colloquies  of  Rosalind  and 
Orlando,  instinct  with  poetry,  are  largely  in  prose,  al- 
though the  talk  of  Silvius  and  Phoebe  is  allowed  to  soar 
aloft   into   blank   verse,  which   is  often   allotted   also   to 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  159 

Jaques.  Perhaps  nothing  displays  more  certainly  Shak- 
spere's  intuitive  mastery  over  every  chord  of  the  lyre  than 
the  intangible  art  by  which  the  wooings  of  Rosalind  are 
etherealized  into  poetry,  while  the  medium  of  expression 
is  but  prose. 

It  may  be  that  Shakspere  was  led  to  utilize  Lodge's 
story  because  it  required  the  heroine  to  disguise  herself  as 
a  lad.  This  was  a  common  dramaturgic  device  under 
Elizabeth,  deriving  a  part  of  its  piquancy  from  the  per- 
formance of  the  female  characters  by  boys.  Shakspere 
had  already  employed  it  in  the  'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona' 
and  the  'Merchant  of  Venice';  and  he  was  to  make  use 
of  it  again  in  'Twelfth  Night.'  In  fact,  in  this  group  of 
romantic-comedies  Beatrice  is  the  only  heroine  who  is 
not  required  to  don  the  apparel  of  the  opposite  sex.  In 
'As  you  Like  it'  the  piquancy  is  redoubled,  since  Rosalind, 
played  by  a  youth,  attires  herself  as  a  lad  and  then  has 
to  pretend  to  Orlando  that  she  is  a  girl — a  trick  of  sur- 
passing theatrical  effectiveness. 

Amusing  as  the  situation  is  in  itself,  its  histrionic  possi- 
bilities are  increased  by  Rosalind's  demure  enjoyment  of 
it.  She  feels  the  fun  of  it,  for  she  has  an  eager  sense  of 
humor  as  well  as  a  bubbling  wit.  She  is  unfailingly  witty 
as  she  is  unfailingly  feminine;  and  her  tongue  has  no  tang 
to  it.  Her  wit  is  not  coruscating  or  aggressive  in  attack; 
it  is  lambent  and  illuminating.  Here  she  is  unlike  Bea- 
trice, who  fences  for  sheer  delight  in  the  passage  of  arms 
itself,  and  who  cares  little  if  the  button  chances  to  drop 
from  her  foil.  Petulant  as  Rosalind  may  be  on  occasion, 
and  provoking,  she  is  ever  womanly,  with  a  depth  of  sen- 
timent not  inferior  to  Viola's.  She  is  at  once  sprightly  and 
tender,  frank  and  cheerful,  the  English  ideal  of  a  healthy 
girl,  glad  to  be  wooed. 


i6o         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

In  her  wholesome  happiness  Rosalind  stands  in  sharp 
contrast  with  the  melancholy  Jaques,  in  whom  sentiment 
has  turned  sour.  Jaques  is  one  of  the  characters  that 
Shakspere  added  to  those  he  took  from  Lodge's  tale.  As 
the  playwright  must  have  fitted  all  his  plays,  one  after 
another,  to  the  special  company  of  actors  for  whom  they 
were  composed  and  by  whom  they  were  produced,  it  may 
not  be  fanciful  to  suggest  that  Jaques  was  possibly  writ- 
ten into  the  play  on  purpose  to  supply  a  part  for  some 
important  actor  who  was  a  good  elocutionist,  perhaps 
for  Burbage  himself.  Certainly  Jaques  does  nothing  but 
stand  and  deliver  speeches;  he  exists  only  to  talk;  he 
has  no  function  to  perform  in  the  plot.  He  might  be  cut 
out  without  affecting  the  structure  of  the  story,  and  yet 
what  would  the  play  be  without  him?  He  supplies  the 
element  of  subacid  humor,  which  contrasts  so  pleasantly 
with  the  happiness  of  all  the  rest;  and  he  also  is  happy 
in  his  gift  of  speech.  He  finds  delight  in  railing  at  the 
world,  and  he  gets  obvious  pleasure  out  of  the  impression 
he  produces  upon  his  hearers,  for  it  can  hardly  be  denied 
that  he  is  constantly  playing  to  the  gallery,  improving  the 
occasion  for  the  sake  of  the  effect  he  is  making  upon  his 
fellow-exiles. 

These  associates  of  his  under  the  greenwood  tree  under- 
stand his  ways  and  they  humor  his  humor.  They  take 
him  for  what  he  is,  waiting  to  hear  what  he  will  say  next. 
They  are  amused  rather  than  grieved  when  he  proceeds 
to  gird  at  all  mankind,  in  his  speech  on  the  seven  ages. 
Perhaps  this  rhetorical  excursus,  this  tenor-solo  of  a  sweet 
nature  which  has  fermented  into  cynicism,  owes  its  origin 
to  the  necessity  of  filling  the  time  while  Orlando  is  bring- 
ing in  Adam.  In  like  manner,  the  learned  disquisition  of 
Touchstone  upon  a  lie  seven  times  removed,  which  seems 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  161 

hopelessly  out  of  place  in  the  final  scene  of  a  play,  when 
everything  ought  to  be  hastening  to  a  conclusion,  had  its 
origin  also  in  a  technical  necessity — the  need  for  bridging 
the  gap  while  Rosalind  was  changing  back  into  the  habili- 
ments of  her  own  sex.  The  set  speech  for  its  own  sake 
was  common  enough  in  the  Elizabethan  drama;  but  in 
these  two  instances  Shakspere  makes  it  useful  as  well  as 
ornamental.  Touchstone  was  also  an  addition  of  Shak- 
spere's  to  the  characters  of  the  original  story;  and  he  may 
also  have  been  introduced  to  supply  a  part  for  a  special 
performer. 

When  Rosalind  is  made  to  marry  Orlando,  the  play  is 
over  and  the  plot  is  promptly  wound  up  in  the  most 
peremptory  fashion,  as  though  the  story  itself  mattered 
little.  The  characters  of  the  semi-tragic  underplot  whom 
we  have  seen  at  the  beginning  of  the  piece  are  now  trans- 
formed in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  in  semi-comic  fashion, 
so  that  the  spectators  in  the  yard  need  not  be  kept  stand- 
ing any  longer.  The  usurping  Duke  suddenly  sees  a  great 
light  and  experiences  a  change  of  heart.  The  wicked  elder 
brother  has  his  life  saved  by  Orlando,  so  he  also  repents 
on  the  spot  and  immediately  falls  in  love  with  Celia,  his 
brother's  bride's  friend,  and  she  with  him,  an  even  more 
startling  case  of  love  at  first  sight  than  Rosalind's  and 
Orlando's.  And  so  the  happiest  of  Shakspere's  comedies 
ends  happily,  as  no  one  of  the  audience  could  ever  have 
doubted  from  the  beginning. 

V 

' Twelfth  Night'  differs  from  the  three  earlier  romantic- 
comedies,  in  that  its  love  story  is  supported  by  a  subplot 
which  is  comic  rather  than  semi-tragic,  although  more 


i62         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

than  one  character  is  for  a  moment  in  deadly  danger. 
Perhaps  the  success  of  'As  you  Like  it'  had  shown  Shak- 
spere  that  he  did  not  need  to  emphasize  the  serious  ele- 
ments as  sharply  as  he  had  done  in  the  'Merchant  of 
Venice'  and  in  'Much  Ado.'  And  in  'Twelfth  Night'  he 
also  illustrates  his  customary  economy  of  invention;  that 
is  to  say,  his  constant  tendency  to  employ  again  devices 
already  approved  by  experience.  Julia  in  the  'Two  Gen- 
tlemen of  Verona'  had  anticipated  Viola  in  her  disguise 
as  a  boy  and  in  then  carrying  a  message  from  the  man 
she  loved  to  the  woman  he  thought  himself  in  love  with. 
Phcebe  in  'As  you  Like  it'  had  anticipated  Olivia  in  her 
falling  in  love  with  a  woman  disguised  as  a  man.  The 
likeness  of  the  twins  of  the  'Comedy  of  Errors,'  a  likeness 
extending  even  to  costume,  had  already  led  the  one  to  be 
taken  for  the  other  before  a  similar  confusion  befell  Viola 
and  Sebastian,  sister  and  brother,  who  look  alike  and  are 
dressed  alike;  and  the  father  of  the  two  Antipholi  had 
adventured  himself  rashly  in  a  hostile  country  before 
Antonio  put  himself  into  a  similar  peril.  Even  the  trick 
which  Maria  plays  upon  Malvolio  in  making  him  believe 
that  Olivia  is  in  love  with  him  is  closely  akin  to  that 
played  upon  Benedick  and  Beatrice.  It  is  true  that  these 
devices  are  ingeniously  varied  in  'Twelfth  Night,'  but  it  is 
true  also  that  they  had  been  employed  in  the  earlier  plays. 
Perhaps  because  the  serious  episodes  are  few  and  unim- 
portant 'Twelfth  Night'  has  a  more  obvious  harmony  of 
tone  than  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  and  'Much  Ado.'  It 
is  a  delicious  compound  of  sentiment  and  humor  shading 
into  one  another  by  exquisite  gradations.  The  exposition 
is  simple  and  clear.  First  of  all,  we  learn  that  Orsino  is 
almost  hopelessly  in  love  with  Olivia;  then  we  are  told  of 
Viola's  shipwreck  and  of  her  intention  to  attach  herself  to 


THE   ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  163 

Orsino;  and  immediately  thereafter  we  are  introduced  to 
Olivia's  strangely  assorted  household.  A  little  later  the 
appearance  of  Sebastian  promptly  arouses  an  interest  of 
expectancy.  All  the  threads  of  the  action  are  then  in  the 
hands  of  the  spectator,  who  can  follow  the  story  in  secu- 
rity while  Viola  is  falling  in  love  with  Orsino  and  Olivia 
with  the  disguised  Viola.  We  can  see  for  ourselves  that 
Olivia  is  as  plain-spoken  in  declaring  her  affection  for 
Viola,  and  later  for  Viola's  brother  (who  so  resembles  his 
sister),  as  Rosalind  was  in  telling  Orlando  that  he  had 
overcome  more  than  his  enemy.  Olivia's  sending  the  ring 
after  the  disguised  Viola  is  the  equivalent  of  Rosalind's 
throwing  her  chain  over  Orlando's  shoulders. 

While  Olivia  is  as  undaunted  in  making  up  to  the  dis- 
guised Viola  as  Rosalind  is  in  her  maidenly  avowal  to 
Orlando,  Viola's  lack  of  hesitancy  in  telling  Orsino  that 
she  has  a  tender  sentiment  for  him  (although  she  then 
knowTs  that  he  thinks  himself  in  love  with  another  woman) 
is  subtler,  since  he  accepts  her  for  a  boy  and  is  therefore 
unable  to  take  her  meaning.  Viola  can  put  on  a  bold  front 
when  she  first  meets  Olivia,  and  she  can  brisk  out  a  pert 
sentence  or  two  on  occasion;  but  she  lacks  the  demure 
fun  of  Rosalind  and  also  Rosalind's  flashing  wit.  Her 
humor  has  a  tender  tinge  as  becomes  her  experience  of  life; 
it  is  a  humor  tinctured  with  melancholy  and  shot  through 
with  sentiment.  She  may  very  well  have  perceived,  with 
a  true  woman's  swiftness  of  perception,  that  Orsino's  love 
for  Olivia  was  lacking  in  the  energy  of  real  passion,  con- 
tenting itself  w^ith  longing  and  sighing.  Orsino  is  not 
really  unhappy  in  his  paraded  misery;  he  is  in  love  with 
love  rather  than  with  Olivia,  and  he  is  ripe  for  a  deeper 
affection  for  Viola  when  he  shall  discover  her  to  be  a 
woman. 


1 64        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

His  change  of  heart  may  be  startlingly  sudden;  and 
startlingly  sudden  also  is  Sebastian's  swift  flame  for 
Olivia.  But  neither  of  these  fifth-act  conversions  is  as 
improbable  as  the  unforeseen  marrying  off  of  Celia  and 
Oliver  in  'As  you  Like  it.'  Viola  is  a  lovely  creature, 
and  why  should  not  Orsino  become  enamoured  of  her  on 
the  spot  when  he  knows  her  at  last  for  a  woman  and  when 
he  may  recall  her  expressions  of  affection  for  him?  Olivia 
is  also  a  beauty;  and  why  should  not  Sebastian  welcome 
the  prize  which  falls  plump  into  his  arms?  All  that  is 
improbable  in  'Twelfth  Night'  is  the  celerity  of  the 
mating,  a  celerity  almost  justified  here  by  the  pressure  of 
the  action  to  its  conclusion.  Besides,  these  two  weddings 
are  only  what  the  spectators  have  dimly  descried  and 
vaguely  desired;  whereas,  in  'As  you  Like  it'  the  union 
of  Celia  and  Oliver  takes  even  the  audience  by  surprise, 
since  the  playwright  has  in  no  wise  prepared  us  for  it. 
In  'Twelfth  Night'  the  dramatist  is  only  availing  himself 
liberally  of  the  privilege  of  condensing  time  and  of  letting 
us  see  on  the  stage  in  a  fifth  act  what  in  real  life  would 
not  have  happened  until  a  sixth  or  a  seventh  act. 

Viola  and  Olivia  were  plainly  written  for  the  boy 
actors  who  had  already  played  Rosalind  and  Celia,  Bea- 
trice and  Hero,  Portia  and  Nerissa;  and  Maria  was  as 
obviously  composed  for  the  boy  actor  who  had  imper- 
sonated Mrs.  Ford.  So  the  performer  of  Malvolio  may  al- 
ready have  appeared  as  Jaques,  the  performer  of  Sir  Toby 
as  Dogberry  (and  perhaps  also  as  FalstafF),  and  the  per- 
former of  Sir  Andrew  as  Slender.  Feste  fell  naturally  to 
the  man  who  had  acted  Touchstone  and  who  was  later  to 
undertake  the  Fool  in  'King  Lear.' 

The  more  humorous  creations  are  sturdily  English  in 
their  robust  fun,  even  if  they  pretend  to  live  in  Illyria, 


THE   ROMANTIC- COMEDIES  165 

just  as  Dogberry  and  Verges  had  established  a  fictitious 
domicile  in  Messina.  Nothing  more  clearly  displays  the 
easy  mastery  of  stage-craft  to  which  Shakspere  has  now 
attained  than  the  skill  with  which  he  here  conjoins  the 
pensive  melancholy  of  Viola's  love  story  with  the  buxom 
merriment  of  Maria's  trick  upon  Malvolio.  Viola  is  the 
central  female  figure  in  the  comedy  as  Malvolio  is  the 
central  male  figure,  and  they  scarcely  meet  in  the  course 
of  the  play.  It  is  Olivia  who  serves  as  the  connecting-link 
between  the  episode  of  sentiment  and  the  more  robustious 
underplot;  and  she  performs  this  artistic  function  without 
in  any  way  derogating  from  her  high  estate  as  the  second 
heroine.  The  author  here  artfully  intertwines  a  delight- 
ful fantasy  with  the  infectious  laughter  of  honest  mirth; 
and  he  so  contrives  his  action  that  we  are  never  made 
aware  of  any  incongruity.  He  passes  from  the  poetry  of 
sentiment  to  the  prose  of  riotous  humor  by  imperceptible 
gradations  that  never  interfere  with  the  pervading  unity 
of  tone. 

In  no  other  comedy  is  the  group  of  comic  characters 
more  exhilaratingly  comic  than  in  ' Twelfth  Night.'  Here 
are  no  longer  the  traditional  figures  of  earlier  English 
comedy.  Shakspere  is  now  able  to  individualize  every 
character,  however  unimportant.  The  jests  of  these  hu- 
morous creations  are  no  longer  extraneous  and  casual 
witticisms;  they  are  evoked  by  the  situation  itself  or  else 
they  are  the  ripe  expression  of  character  revealing  itself 
in  dialogue.  There  is  no  straining  for  points,  no  overt 
effort,  such  as  is  only  too  evident  in  the  earlier  comedies. 
There  is  no  display  of  cleverness  for  its  own  sake.  What 
the  several  characters  say  is  what  they  would  say,  and 
not  what  the  author  has  chosen  to  put  in  their  mouths; 
it  is  what  they  cannot  help  saying.     The  fun  is  no  longer 


1 66         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

in  the  words,  even  if  it  is  often  in  the  words  also;  it  is 
even  more  in  the  characters  themselves  than  in  the  situ- 
ations, amusing  as  these  are.  Of  course,  Shakspere  has 
not  ceased  to  be  an  Elizabethan;  no  man  may  step  off 
his  own  shadow;  and  the  belief  in  Malvolio's  insanity  is 
treated  in  accord  with  the  Elizabethan  acceptance  of 
madness  as  comic  in  itself. 


VI 

These  four  plays  do  not  fall  into  any  of  the  ordinarily 
accepted  classifications;  they  do  not  strictly  belong  to 
the  comedy-of-manners  or  the  comedy-of-sentiment,  to 
the  comedy-of-humors  or  to  the  comedy-of-character;  and 
they  are  equally  remote  from  that  type  of  high-comedy 
which  Moliere  evolved  and  in  which  the  action  is  caused 
by  the  clash  of  character  on  character.  They  do  not  con- 
form to  Stendhal's  dictum  that  tragedy  is  the  development 
of  an  action  and  comedy  the  development  of  a  character, 
which  is  to  be  shown  by  a  succession  of  ideas;  for  this 
these  four  comedies  are  too  full  of  fantasy,  of  romance,  of 
poetry.  They  belong  to  the  type  of  romantic-comedy,  to 
which  Shakspere  alone  had  the  clue — even  if  Musset  was 
able  to  stray  a  little  way  into  the  path  Shakspere  had 
pointed  out;  and  Musset  was  a  lyric  poet  who  was  a 
playwright  almost  by  accident.  This  romantic-comedy  is 
compounded  of  capricious  fancy  and  of  exuberant  humor; 
it  is  fundamentally  joyous,  although  it  may  now  and  again 
wander  almost  to  the  verge  of  impending  disaster.  It 
bears  us  away  from  this  workaday  world  across  the  gulf 
of  time  to  a  fabled  shore  where  we  may  find  measureless 
relief  from  sordid  care.  It  commingles  poetry  and  even 
pathos  with  wit  and  humor.     Perhaps  the  deepest  note  is 


THE  ROMANTIC-COMEDIES  167 

struck  in  'Twelfth  Night,'  the  latest  of  the  four,  and  also 
the  boldest  note  of  skylarking  fun.  In  fact,  it  needs  to  be 
noted  that  'Twelfth  Night,'  which  is  one  of  the  most  per- 
vadingly  poetic  of  Shakspere's  comedies,  is  the  last  of  his 
plays  in  which  the  humor  is  broad  and  hearty,  the  last  in 
which  there  is  any  true  gaiety  or  any  richly  comic  char- 
acters. For  whatever  reason,  internal  or  external,  his  suc- 
ceeding plays  were  to  take  on  a  more  somber  color;  and 
when  he  had  finished  'Twelfth  Night'  he  was  ready  to  be- 
gin 'Hamlet.' 


CHAPTER  IX 
SHAKSPERE  AS  AN  ACTOR 


Before  dealing  with  *  Hamlet,'  it  may  be  well  to  pause 
here  to  consider  Shakspere's  own  career  upon  the  stage 
as  an  actor;  since  it  was  in  one  of  these  four  romantic- 
comedies  that  he  performed  the  first  part  concerning  which 
we  have  any  record.  Of  course  he  had  been  an  actor  for 
years  before  he  wrote  'As  you  Like  it,'  and  even  before 
he  made  his  first  venture  as  a  dramatic  author;  he  must 
have  created  many  parts  in  his  own  earlier  plays  and  in 
the  plays  of  other  dramatists  produced  by  the  company 
to  which  he  belonged.  But  as  to  these  parts  we  have  no 
information.  We  have,  however,  warrant  for  believing 
that  he  did  undertake  Adam,  the  old  servant  of  Orlando. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  curious  coincidences  of  literary 
history  that  the  two  greatest  dramatists  of  modern  times, 
Shakspere  and  Moliere,  should  have  begun  their  connec- 
tion with  the  theater  by  going  on  the  stage  as  actors, 
without  having  at  first  (so  far  as  we  can  guess)  any  in- 
tention of  becoming  playwrights.  After  having  acquired 
practical  experience  as  performers,  both  of  them  ventured 
modestly  into  dramatic  authorship.  But  to  the  very  end 
of  their  careers  in  the  theater  they  continued  to  act; 
Shakspere  ceased  to  appear  on  the  stage  only  when  he 
left  London  and  retired  to  Stratford  to  live  the  life  of  a 
country  gentleman,  and  Moliere  was  stricken  fatally  while 
taking  part  in  the  fourth  performance  of  his  last  play. 


SHAKSPERE  AS  AN  ACTOR  169 

Moliere  certainly,  and  quite  possibly  Shakspere  also, 
was  better  known  to  the  playgoers  of  his  own  day  as  an 
actor  than  as  an  author.  Moliere  was  the  foremost  come- 
dian of  his  day,  and  there  is  no  dispute  about  his  suprem- 
acy as  an  impersonator  of  humorous  characters.  Indeed, 
his  enemies  were  wont  to  praise  his  acting  and  to  disparage 
his  writing;  they  affected  to  dismiss  his  plays  as  poor 
things  in  themselves,  owing  their  undeniable  success  to  the 
brilliancy  of  the  author's  own  performance  of  the  chief 
parts.  As  actor,  as  author  and  as  manager  Moliere  was 
the  center  of  his  company.  Can  as  much  be  said  of  Shak- 
spere? Great  as  Moliere  is  as  a  dramatist,  we  cannot  but 
feel  that  Shakspere  is  still  greater.  When  we  note  that 
Moliere  was  preeminent  among  the  players  of  his  age  in 
France,  we  naturally  wonder  whether  Shakspere  was  also 
foremost  among  the  performers  of  his  time  in  England. 
Moliere  is  the  master  of  modern  comedy,  and  it  was  by 
the  impersonation  of  his  own  comic  characters  that  he 
won  his  widest  popularity  with  the  playgoers  of  Paris. 
Shakspere  is  the  mightiest  of  tragic  authors.  Was  he 
also  the  chief  of  the  tragedians  who  held  spellbound  the 
gallants  and  the  groundlings  thronging  to  the  London 
theaters  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth  and  of  James? 

That  the  leader  of  English  playwrights  was  also  the 
leader  of  English  actors  is  what  we  should  like  to  believe  in 
our  natural  desire  to  give  to  him  that  hath.  This  desire 
has  led  Sir  Sidney  Lee  to  remark  that  when  the  company 
of  the  Globe  accepted  the  royal  summons  to  appear  before 
the  queen  at  Christmas,  1594,  Shakspere  was  then  "sup- 
ported by  actors  of  the  highest  eminence  in  their  genera- 
tion." And  yet  Sir  Sidney  is  frank  in  expressing  his  own 
opinion  that  the  great  dramatist  "was  never  to  win  the 
laurels    of    a    great    actor."     He    honestly    admits    that 


i7o        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Shakspere's  "histrionic  fame  had  not  progressed  at  the 
same  rate  as  his  literary  repute";  and  he  informs  us  that 
when  the  officials  of  the  court  invited  the  company  to 
perform  before  Elizabeth,  "directions  were  given  that  the 
greatest  of  the  tragic  actors  of  the  day,  Richard  Burbage, 
and  the  greatest  of  the  comic  actors,  William  Kemp,  were 
to  bear  the  young  actor  company."  And  he  adds  that 
"with  neither  of  these  was  Shakspere's  histrionic  position 
then,  or  at  any  time,  comparable,"  since  "for  years  they 
were  leaders  of  the  acting  profession." 

This  forces  us  to  the  conclusion  that  in  his  pardonable 
longing  to  glorify  Shakspere  the  biographer  has  been 
led  into  giving  us  a  wrong  impression.  The  queen  did 
not  summon  Shakspere  to  appear  before  her;  she  sum- 
moned the  whole  company  to  which  Shakspere  belonged; 
and  almost  certainly  it  was  Burbage  and  Kemp  whom  she 
wanted  to  see  on  the  stage  rather  than  Shakspere.  Bur- 
bage and  Kemp  were  the  chief  ornaments  of  the  company, 
and  although  Shakspere  was  also  a  member,  his  position 
in  its  ranks  does  not  afford  any  warrant  for  the  assump- 
tion that  Elizabeth  gave  any  special  thought  to  him  as 
an  actor.  What  she  was  desirous  of  witnessing  was  a 
series  of  performances  by  a  famous  company  of  which 
Burbage  and  Kemp  were  the  most  famous  members. 
And  in  this  series  of  performances  at  court  it  was  Shak- 
spere who  supported  Burbage  and  Kemp.  It  must  be 
noted  also  that  we  do  not  know  the  program  of  those 
performances  at  court  in  the  last  week  of  1594,  and  we 
are  left  in  doubt  whether  Shakspere  was  the  author  of 
any  one  of  the  plays  then  presented.  Perhaps  it  is  as 
well  to  point  out  further  that  up  to  that  time  he  had 
produced  no  one  of  the  major  masterpieces  on  which  his 
fame  as  a  dramatist  now  rests  securely. 


SHAKSPERE  AS  AX  ACTOR  171 

While  Moliere  composed  the  chief  character  in  almost 
every  one  of  his  plays  for  his  own  acting,  Shakspere  wrote 
the  chief  serious  parts  in  his  pieces  for  Burbage  and  the 
chief  comic  parts  for  Kemp  (until  that  amusing  comedian 
left  the  company).  For  himself  he  modestly  reserved 
characters  of  less  prominence;  in  fact,  in  many  of  his 
plays,  perhaps  even  in  a  majority  of  them,  it  is  difficult 
to  discover  any  part  which  seems  to  be  specially  adjusted 
to  his  own  capacity  as  an  actor.  It  is  well  known  that 
Burbage  appeared  as  Hamlet,  while  Shakspere  humbly 
contented  himself  with  the  subordinate  part  of  the  Ghost. 
Who  the  original  Orlando  may  have  been  has  not  yet  been 
ascertained,  but  tradition  tells  us  that  the  author  of  'As 
you  Like  it'  impersonated  Adam,  the  faithful  old  ser- 
vitor of  the  hero.  And  in  Ben  Jonson's  comedy  of  'Every 
Man  in  his  Humour,'  which  is  believed  to  have  been  ac- 
cepted for  performance  by  the  company,  owing  to  Shak- 
spere's  influence,  the  part  of  the  elder  Knowell  is  said  to 
have  been  taken  by  Shakspere  himself;  and  this  seems 
quite  probable,  since  it  was  a  character  which  might  very 
well  be  assumed  by  the  performer  of  Adam  and  of  the 
Ghost.  These  are  the  only  three  parts  which  tradition, 
not  always  trustworthy,  has  ascribed  to  Shakspere  as 
an  actor.  They  belong,  all  three  of  them,  to  the  line  of 
business  which  is  technically  known  as  "old  men."  And 
this  is  the  solid  support  of  Sir  Sidney  Lee's  assertion  that 
Shakspere  "ordinarily  confined  his  efforts  to  old  men  of 
secondary  rank." 

II 

Shakspere,  so  his  biographer  believes,  was  twenty-two 
when  he  left  his  wife  and  his  three  children  at  Stratford, 
and  trudged  up  to  London  to  seek  his  fortune;  and  he  was 


172         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

probably  about  twenty-five  before  his  first  piece  was 
performed.  We  have  no  information  as  to  the  means 
whereby  he  supported  himself  when  he  first  arrived  in 
the  capital.  He  may  have  held  horses  at  the  door  of  the 
theater,  as  one  tradition  has  it.  Or  he  may  have  been  able 
to  attach  himself  at  once  to  one  of  the  half-dozen  com- 
panies of  actors  in  London,  since  he  might  have  won 
friends  among  their  members  when  one  or  another  of  them 
had  appeared  at  Stratford  in  the  summers  immediately 
preceding  his  departure  from  his  birthplace.  Malone  re- 
corded a  tradition  "that  his  first  office  in  the  theater 
was  that  of  prompter's  attendant" — that  is  to  say,  call- 
boy,  as  the  function  is  now  styled.  This  may  be  a  fact, 
of  course,  but  it  seems  a  little  unlikely,  since  a  man  of 
twenty-two  would  be  rather  mature  for  such  work,  easily 
within  the  capacity  of  a  lad  of  fourteen. 

If  Shakspere  left  Stratford  in  1586  he  had  already  estab- 
lished himself  in  London  as  an  actor  six  years  later,  when 
he  was  twenty-eight.  It  was  in  1 592  that  Chettle,  the  pub- 
lisher, apologizing  for  having  issued  Greene's  posthumous 
attack  on  Shakspere,  declared  that  he  was  "excellent  in 
the  qualitie  he  professes" — that  is  to  say,  excellent  as  an 
actor.  This  is  high  praise  for  so  young  a  performer;  but 
Chettle's  testimony  does  not  carry  as  much  weight  as  it 
might,  since  he  is  here  seeking  by  frank  flattery  to  make 
amends  for  the  attack  he  had  previously  published.  Yet 
this  praise  may  be  taken  as  evidence  that  Shakspere  by 
that  time  had  succeeded  in  achieving  a  recognized  position 
on  the  stage  as  an  actor.  A  tradition — which,  however, 
did  not  get  into  print  until  1699,  more  than  threescore 
years  and  ten  after  Shakspere's  death — declared  that  he 
was  "better  poet  than  player." 

Whether  or  not  he  began  his  career  in  the  theater  as  a 


SHAKSPERE  AS  AN  ACTOR  1/3 

call-boy,  he  seems  very  early  to  have  made  choice  of  the 
"  line  of  business  "  which  he  wished  to  play.  He  may  have 
chosen  it  because  he  believed  himself  to  be  best  fitted  for 
parts  of  that  kind,  or  he  may  have  drifted  into  the  per- 
formance of  "old  men"  because  there  happened  at  that 
moment  to  be  a  vacancy  in  the  company  for  a  competent 
performer  of  these  elderly  characters.  Although  the  im- 
personator of  these  parts  is  said  to  play  "old  men,"  the 
characters  he  is  to  assume  are  not  all  of  them  stricken  in 
years,  even  if  they  are  grave  and  sedate,  lacking  in  the 
exuberant  vivacity  of  youth.  The  Ghost,  for  example, 
and  Adam  also,  are  technically  "old  men."  So  are  many 
of  the  dukes  and  other  chiefs  of  state,  personages  of  noble 
bearing  and  of  emphatic  dignity.  That  Shakspere  ap- 
peared in  characters  of  this  type  in  more  than  one  of  his 
own  plays  is  more  than  probable.  In  fact,  one  John 
Davies,  of  Hereford,  recorded  that  Shakspere  "played 
some  kingly  parts  in  sport."  Just  what  the  words  "in 
sport"  may  mean  must  be  left  to  the  imagination. 

That  these  austere  and  lofty  characters  are  known  in 
the  theater  to-day  as  "old  men"  does  not  imply  that  the 
actor  who  has  chosen  this  line  of  business  is  himself 
elderly.  On  the  contrary,  young  actors  have  often  delib- 
erately decided  to  devote  themselves  to  the  performance 
of  "old  men."  The  late  John  Gilbert,  for  example,  long 
connected  with  Wallack's  Theater  in  New  York,  and  cele- 
brated for  his  unrivaled  rendering  of  Sir  Peter  Teazle  and 
Sir  Anthony  Absolute,  began  to  impersonate  elderly  char- 
acters before  he  was  twenty.  If  Shakspere  played  the 
Ghost  and  Adam,  and  if  Gilbert  also  undertook  these 
characters,  then  it  is  possible  that  certain  of  the  other 
Shaksperian  parts  assumed  by  the  American  actor  as  the 
"old   man"  of  his   company  may  have  been  originally 


174         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

written  by  Shakspere  for  his  own  acting.  And  this  leads 
us  to  the  plausible  supposition  that  Shakspere  may  have 
been  the  original  performer  of  iEgeon  in  the  *  Comedy 
of  Errors/  of  Leonato  in  'Much  Ado  about  Nothing,'  of 
Baptista  in  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew,'  of  Friar  Lawrence 
in  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  of  the  King  of  France  in  'All's 
Well  that  Ends  Well,'  of  the  Duke  in  'Othello,'  of  the 
Duke  in  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  and  possibly  also  of 
the  Duke  in  'Measure  for  Measure'  (although  in  this  last 
somber  comedy  it  may  be  that  the  part  which  Shakspere 
performed  was  one  or  the  other  of  the  two  Friars). 

The  ascription  of  these  characters  to  Shakspere  as  an 
actor  may  be  only  a  hazardous  guess,  but  it  is  a  guess 
supported  by  all  the  known  facts.  It  is  in  accordance 
with  the  customs  of  the  theatrical  profession,  which  are  as 
the  laws  of  the  Medes  and  Persians.  A  minute  investi- 
gation of  all  his  plays  by  an  expert  in  theatrical  history 
and  in  histrionic  tradition  would  greatly  increase  the  num- 
ber of  the  parts  which  we  have  fair  warrant  for  assuming 
to  have  been  written  by  Shakspere  with  an  eye  to  his  own 
acting. 

The  characters  that  have  been  here  listed  tentatively 
(and  those  that  may  be  added  to  the  catalogue)  will  be 
found  to  have  certain  general  characteristics.  They  are 
all  of  them  important  and  they  are  none  of  them  promi- 
nent. The  demands  they  severally  made  upon  the  actor 
who  undertook  them  are  not  a  few;  for  their  proper  rep- 
resentation most  of  them  required  a  dignified  presence,  a 
courtly  bearing,  an  air  of  authority  and  a  large  measure 
of  elocutionary  skill.  But  the  qualities  these  parts  did 
not  necessitate  are  equally  significant.  They  called  pri- 
marily for  intelligence  and  only  secondarily,  if  at  all,  for 
any  large  exhibition  of  emotion.     Now,  it  is  by  the  power 


SHAKSPERE  AS  AN  ACTOR  175 

of  expressing  passion  at  the  great  crises  of  existence  and 
by  the  faculty  of  transmitting  his  feeling  to  his  audience 
that  the  great  actor  is  revealed.  If  he  has  not  this  native 
gift  of  communicable  emotion  he  can  never  be  intrusted 
with  the  more  moving  characters  of  a  play.  And  appar- 
ently this  native  gift  was  denied  to  Shakspere,  who  had 
so  many  others.  An  actor  could  acquit  himself  admira- 
bly in  the  Ghost  and  in  Adam  and  in  all  the  other  "old 
men"  which  may  have  been  undertaken  by  Shakspere,  he 
could  have  performed  them  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of 
the  most  critical  spectators,  without  revealing  the  posses- 
sion of  the  vital  spark  which  illuminates  the  creative  work 
of  the  truly  great  actor.  In  other  words,  these  parts  do 
not  demand  that  the  performer  of  them  shall  possess  more 
than  a  moderate  share  of  that  mimetic  faculty,  that  full- 
ness of  feeling,  that  amplitude  of  passion  which  is  the 
essential  qualification  for  histrionic  excellence. 

III 

To  say  this  is  not  to  suggest  that  Shakspere  had  not  a 
keen  understanding  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  the 
art  of  acting.  Such  an  understanding  was  his  beyond  all 
question,  since  it  is  a  matter  of  the  intelligence,  of  intel- 
lectual appreciation.  We  have  only  to  recall  the  re- 
hearsal of  Bottom  and  his  fellows  and  to  read  again 
Hamlet's  pregnant  advice  to  the  Players.  This  under- 
standing of  the  art  of  acting  a  playwright  must  always 
have  or  he  will  fail  to  get  the  utmost  out  of  his  actors. 
It  is  a  condition  precedent  to  his  success  as  a  writer  of 
stage-plays;  and  it  is  possessed  by  every  successful  dram- 
atist, by  Racine  and  by  Sheridan,  by  Sardou  and  by 
Bronson  Howard,  by  Pinero  and  by  Henry  Arthur  Jones. 


176        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

The  playwrights  must  know  what  can  be  done  with  every 
part  in  every  play  of  theirs,  so  that  they  may  then  help 
the  performers  to  attain  this.  They  know  what  can  be 
done — but  it  does  not  follow  that  they  can  do  it  them- 
selves. Their  grasp  of  the  principles  of  the  art  does  not 
imply  that  they  themselves  could  act  any  one  of  their 
best  parts  as  they  would  wish  to  have  this  acted.  They 
may  be  the  most  skilful  of  trainers,  and  yet  themselves 
lack  a  rich  histrionic  endowment. 

And  not  merely  dramatists  but  stage-managers — "pro- 
ducers," as  they  are  now  styled — may  have  this  faculty  of 
directing  and  guiding  and  inspiring  performers  to  achieve 
their  utmost  without  themselves  being  capable  of  doing  as 
actors  what  they  feel  ought  to  be  done.  Any  one  at  all 
familiar  with  stage-history  can  cite  men  who  have  not 
been  eminent  as  actors  and  yet  who  were  able  to  suggest 
to  others  how  to  get  the  best  out  of  themselves.  It  was 
little  Bows  who  taught  the  Fotheringay  the  effects  which 
so  impressed  the  youthful  Pendennis.  It  was  Samson,  a 
withered  comedian  of  limited  range  but  of  keen  artistic 
intelligence,  who  suggested  to  Rachel  many  of  her  most 
effective  strokes  in  tragedy. 

When  we  set  Hamlet's  speech  to  the  Players  over 
against  the  remarks  which  Moliere  made  in  his  own  per- 
son in  the  '  Impromptu  of  Versailles,'  we  cannot  help  see- 
ing that  these  great  dramatists  were  alike  in  abhorring 
artificiality  in  acting,  in  abominating  violence,  in  detest- 
ing rant  and  in  relishing  simplicity  and  apparent  natural- 
ness. Both  of  them  inculcated  the  necessity  of  truth  in 
the  portrayal  of  character  and  of  passion.  Moliere  at- 
tained also  to  the  highest  levels  of  the  histrionic  art;  Shak- 
spere  did  not,  probably  because  he  was  wanting  in  some 
one  of  the  several  physical  qualifications  which  the  actor 


SHAKSPERE  AS  AN  ACTOR  177 

of  dominating  parts  must  have.  Apparently  he  was  a 
well-proportioned  man  even  if  not  positively  good-look- 
ing. But  his  body  may  have  been  rebellious  to  his  will, 
with  the  result  that  his  gestures,  however  well  intentioned, 
would  be  ineffective  and  even  awkward.  It  may  be  that 
it  was  his  voice  which  was  at  fault;  and  a  noble  organ  of 
speech  is  almost  indispensable  to  a  great  actor.  In  one 
of  his  papers  on  'Actors  and  the  Art  of  Acting'  (always 
full  of  insight  into  the  principles  of  that  little-understood 
art),  George  Henry  Lewes  considered  this  possibility: 

"I  dare  say  he  declaimed  finely,  as  far  as  rhythmic 
cadence  and  a  nice  accentuation  went.  But  his  non- 
success  implies  that  his  voice  was  intractable,  or  limited 
in  its  range.  Without  a  sympathetic  voice,  no  declama- 
tion can  be  effective.  The  tones  which  stir  us  need  not 
be  musical,  need  not  be  pleasant  even,  but  they  must  have 
a  penetrating,  vibrating  quality.  Had  Shakspere  pos- 
sessed such  a  voice  he  would  have  been  famous  as  an  actor. 
Without  it  all  his  other  gifts  were  as  nothing  on  the  stage. 
Had  he  seen  Garrick,  Kemble,  or  Kean  performing  in  plays 
not  his  own  he  might  doubtless  have  perceived  a  thousand 
deficiencies  in  their  conception,  and  defects  in  their  exe- 
cution; but  had  he  appeared  on  the  same  stage  with 
them,  even  in  plays  of  his  own,  the  audiences  would  have 
seen  the  wide  gulf  between  conception  and  presentation. 
One  lurid  look,  one  pathetic  intonation,  would  have  more 
power  in  swaying  the  emotions  of  the  audience  than  all 
the  subtle  and  profound  passion  which  agitated  the  soul 
of  the  poet,  but  did  not  manifestly  express  itself;  the  look 
and  the  tone  may  come  from  a  man  so  drunk  as  to  be 
scarcely  able  to  stand;  but  the  public  sees  only  the  look, 
hears  only  the  tone,  and  is  irresistibly  moved  by  these 
intelligible  symbols." 


178         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

A  little  earlier  in  this  same  suggestive  discussion  of 
'Shakspere  as  an  Actor  and  Critic,'  Lewes  asserted  that 
"Shakspere  doubtless  knew — none  knew  so  well — how 
Hamlet,  Othello,  Richard  and  Falstaff  should  be  per- 
sonated; but  had  he  been  called  upon  to  personate  them 
he  would  have  found  himself  wanting  in  voice,  face  and 
temperament.  The  delicate  sensitiveness  of  his  organi- 
zation, which  is  implied  in  the  exquisiteness  and  flexibility 
of  his  genius,  would  absolutely  have  unfitted  him  for  the 
presentation  of  characters  demanding  a  robust  vigor  and 
a  weighty  animalism.  It  is  a  vain  attempt  to  paint  fres- 
coes with  a  camel's-hair  brush.  The  broad  and  massive 
effects  necessary  to  scenic  presentation  could  never  have 
been  produced  by  such  a  temperament  as  his." 

Probably  it  was  because  Shakspere  had  the  delicate 
sensitiveness  with  which  Lewes  credited  him  that  he  had 
also  a  distaste  for  acting — if  we  may  interpret  any  of  the 
lines  of  his  sonnets  as  lyric  revelations  of  his  own  senti- 
ment. The  intrigue  which  we  think  we  can  disentangle 
by  a  minute  analysis  of  these  poems  may  be  feigned  and 
unreal,  a  mere  compliance  with  a  literary  fashion  of  the 
moment;  but  there  is  a  sincerer  note  of  personal  feeling  in 
the  sonnets  in  which  Shakspere  seems  to  be  expressing  his 
dislike  for  the  calling  by  which  he  made  his  living.  In 
the  hundred-and-tenth  sonnet  he  confessed: 

Alas,  'tis  true  I  have  gone  here  and  there 
And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view. 

And  in  the  hundred-and-eleventh,  which  links  itself 
logically  with  its  predecessor,  he  appealed  for  a  more  tol- 
erant consideration  of  his  character  contaminated  by  the 
stage: 


SHAKSPERE  AS  AN  ACTOR  179 

O,  for  my  sake  do  you  with  Fortune  chide, 
The  guilty  goddess  of  my  harmfull  deeds, 
That  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide 
Than  public  means  what  public  manners  breeds. 
Thence  comes  it  that  my  nature  receives  a  brand; 
And  almost  thence  my  nature  is  subdued 
To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer's  hand; 
Pity  me  then  and  wish  I  were  renew'd. 

If  Shakspere  is  here  speaking  of  himself  as  an  actor,  if 
this  lyric  is  really  wrung  from  the  bottom  of  his  heart, 
then  we  have  an  ample  explanation  for  his  failure  to  at- 
tain to  the  higher  summits  of  the  histrionic  art.  He  did 
not  like  his  profession;  he  did  not  enjoy  acting;  and  we 
may  take  it  as  certain  that  no  man  ever  won  to  the  front 
in  a  calling  which  he  did  not  love,  just  as  no  man  ever 
despised  the  art  in  which  he  excelled.  Shakspere's  dis- 
like of  acting  may  have  been  the  cause  of  his  lack  of 
mastery  or  it  may  have  been  the  consequence  of  this.  Of 
course,  it  is  dimly  possible  that  we  are  reading  into  these 
sonnets  more  than  Shakspere  meant  to  put  into  them, 
and  that  the  quoted  lines  do  not  represent  his  own  feelings. 
And  even  if  they  do,  they  may  utter  what  was  only  a 
fleeting  disgust  for  that  personal  exhibition  which  is  the 
inseparable  condition  of  acting  and  from  which  the  prac- 
titioners of  all  the  other  arts  (except  oratory)  are  exempt 
— a  personal  exhibition  doubly  disagreeable  to  a  poet  of 
Shakspere's  "delicate  sensitiveness." 

Perhaps  it  is  not  fanciful  to  find  in  'As  you  Like  it' 
itself  evidence  in  behalf  of  the  contention  that  Shakspere 
was  not  greatly  interested  in  himself  as  an  actor.  Adam, 
who  is  a  character  of  some  importance  in  the  first  half  of 
the  comedy,  most  unexpectedly  disappears  from  it  in  the 
second  half.     Now,  if  the  author  had  been  anxious  for 


180         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

ampler  histrionic  opportunity,  it  would  not  have  been 
difficult  for  him  to  bring  in  Adam  again  toward  the  end 
of  the  play,  that  he  might  impress  himself  more  securely 
on  the  memory  of  the  audience. 


IV 

It  was  probably  about  1 598  that  Shakspere  first  appeared 
as  Adam  and  as  the  elder  Knowell,  and  it  was  probably 
about  1602  that  he  first  personated  the  Ghost,  being  then 
thirty-eight  years  old.  He  was  to  remain  on  the  stage  ten 
or  twelve  years  longer,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  the  parts  he  played  in  later  life  were  any  more  impor- 
tant. We  do  not  know  what  characters  he  undertook  in 
the  plays  which  he  wrote  after  'Hamlet,'  nor  do  we  know 
what  parts  he  assumed  in  the  many  pieces  by  other  authors 
which  made  up  the  repertory  of  the  company.  That  he 
continued  to  act  we  need  not  doubt;  for  instance,  he  was 
one  of  the  performers  in  Ben  Jonson's  'Sejanus,'  probably 
produced  in  1602  or  1603.  But  the  absence  of  specific 
information  on  this  point  is  evidence  that  he  did  not 
impress  himself  upon  his  contemporaries  as  an  actor  of 
power.  As  Lewes  declared,  "the  mere  fact  that  we  hear 
nothing  of  his  qualities  as  an  actor  implies  that  there  was 
nothing  above  the  line,  nothing  memorable  to  be  spoken 
of."  The  parts  which  we  believe  him  to  have  played  did 
not  "demand  or  admit  various  excellencies. "  Shakspere 
may  have  had  lofty  histrionic  ambitions;  but  probably  he 
was  not  allowed  to  gratify  his  longings,  and  certainly  we 
have  no  tradition  or  hint  that  he  ever  failed  in  what  he 
attempted  in  the  theater.  Perhaps  we  are  justified  in 
believing  that  he  had  gone  on  the  stage  merely  as  the 
easiest  means  of  immediately  earning  his  living,  that  he 


SHAKSPERE  AS  AN  ACTOR  181 

did  not  greatly  care  for  acting,  and  that  he  was  satisfied 
to  assume  the  responsible  but  subordinate  parts  for  which 
he  was  best  fitted. 

This  view  of  his  capacity  as  an  actor  is  sustained  by 
another  consideration.     Whatever  Shakspere's  position  as 
a  performer  may  have  been,  his  later  popularity  as  a  play- 
wright is  beyond  dispute;  indeed,  his  appeal  to  the  play- 
going  public  was  so  potent  that  it  tempted  more  than  one 
unscrupulous  publisher  to  put  Shakspere's  name  to  plays 
which  were  not  his.     And  his  position  as  a  member  of  the 
company  was  equally  solidly  established.     All  his  plays 
(with  one  possible  and  unimportant  exception)  had  been 
written  for  this  company,  to  which  he  had  been  early 
admitted,  and  of  which  he  soon  became  one  of  the  man- 
agers, who  had  the  responsibilities  and  who  shared  the 
profits  of  the  enterprise.     He  ranked  high  in  the  com- 
pany, and  when  King  James  took  it  under  his  direct  pat- 
ronage, shortly  after  his  accession  in   1603,  Shakspere's 
name  is  the  second  on  the  list  of  actors  as  it  appears  on 
the  royal  warrant,  and  Burbage's  is  third.    There  is  ample 
evidence  that  he  was  held  in  high  esteem  by  his  comrades 
of  the  theater.     That  he  had  a  warm  regard  for  them  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  in  his  will  he  left  money  to  Bur- 
bage,  Condell  and  Heming  for  the  purchase  of  memorial 
rings.     That  they  cherished  his  memory  is  proved  by  the 
publication  (seven  years  after  his  death)  of  the  folio  edi- 
tion of  his  complete  plays,  due  to  the  pious  care  of  Con- 
dell and  Heming.     Shakspere  had  the  gift  of  friendship 
and   he  bound  his  fellows  to  him  with  hoops  of  steel. 
Outside  of  the  theater  also  he  was  widely  liked;  and  the 
personal  references  to  him  which  have  been  gleaned  from 
contemporary    writers,    however    inadequate    they    may 
seem  to  us  nowadays  in  appreciation  of  his  genius,  are 


182         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

abundant  in  expressions  of  regard  for  the  man,  for  his 
gentleness  and  his  courtesy. 

Now,  if  Shakspere  was  popular  with  his  fellow-actors, 
with  the  playgoing  public,  with  those  he  met  outside  the 
theater,  there  is  no  other  possible  explanation  of  the  fact 
that  he  did  not  take  the  chief  parts  in  at  least  a  few  of  his 
own  plays  except  that  he  was  either  incapable  of  so  doing 
or  not  desirous  of  attempting  to.  We  have  only  to  con- 
sider the  history  of  the  theater  to  discover  that  every 
actor-playwright,  from  Moliere  to  Boucicault  and  Gillette, 
who  had  both  ambition  and  ability  composed  the  central 
characters  of  his  own  plays  for  his  own  acting.  This  is 
what  has  happened  always  in  the  past,  and  it  is  what 
must  happen  whenever  a  gifted  actor  takes  to  writing  or 
whenever  a  gifted  writer  takes  to  acting.  If  therefore 
Shakspere  did  not  himself  undertake  Richard  III  or 
Hamlet  or  Lear  or  any  other  overwhelming  part,  but 
devised  them  rather  for  the  acting  of  Burbage,  we  are 
forced  to  the  conclusion  that  he  knew  himself  unfitted  for 
them,  and  that  his  comrades  in  the  theater,  his  fellow- 
managers,  knew  this  also.  In  other  words,  Shakspere 
appeared  as  Adam  and  as  the  Ghost,  and  he  confined  his 
acting  to  "old  men,"  because  these  parts  were  well  within 
his  physical  limitations.  This  conclusion,  that  the  great- 
est of  dramatists  was  not  also  great  as  an  actor,  may  be 
unwelcome,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  escape  from  it. 


V 

For  Shakspere  himself,  however,  if  not  for  his  modern 
admirers,  there  was  one  obvious  compensation.  He  may 
not  have  been  fond  of  the  art,  he  may  even  have  disliked 
the  practice  of  his  profession,  and  he  may  not  have  revealed 


SHAKSPERE   AS   AN  ACTOR  183 

himself  as  a  performer  of  more  than  respectable  ability; 
but  he  owed  to  acting  the  solid  foundation  of  his  fortune. 
He  went  to  London  in  his  youth  with  no  visible  means  of 
support,  although  already  burdened  with  a  wife  and  three 
children;  and  he  went  back  to  Stratford  not  only  well-to- 
do,  but  probably  better  off  than  any  other  resident  of  the 
little  town.  Even  if  Shakspere  was  not  a  great  actor,  it 
was  as  an  actor  that  he  gained  entrance  into  the  theater, 
that  he  acquired  that  intimate  familiarity  with  stage- 
technic  which  is  evident  in  his  masterpieces,  and  that  he 
was  able  to  get  his  successive  plays  swiftly  produced  by 
the  very  actors  for  whose  performance  he  had  specially 
devised  them.  It  is  because  he  was  an  actor  that  he  was 
able  speedily  to  make  his  way  as  a  playwright;  and  it  was 
because  he  was  valuable  to  the  company  as  actor  and  as 
playwright  that  he  was  admitted  partner  in  the  under- 
taking. If  he  had  not  become  an  actor,  he  might  or  he 
might  not  have  written  ' Hamlet'  and  ' Julius  Caesar'  and 
'As  you  Like  it,'  but  he  probably  would  never  have  been 
able  to  buy  New  Place,  to  get  a  grant  of  arms  for  his 
father,  and  to  spend  the  final  years  of  his  life  in  leisure. 
And  we  may  rest  assured  that  Shakspere  himself  recog- 
nized all  the  advantage  it  was  to  him  to  be  an  actor,  even 
if  he  did  affect  in  one  or  another  of  his  sonnets  to  rail 
against  the  disadvantages.  Great  poet  as  he  was,  he  was 
also  a  good  man  of  business,  with  a  keen  eye  to  the  main 
chance. 

Shakspere  had  three  sources  of  income — as  an  actor, 
as  an  author  and  as  one  of  the  managers.  Sir  Sidney  Lee 
has  calculated  that  in  the  earlier  years  of  Shakspere's  con- 
nection with  the  theater  he  received  at  least  a  hundred 
pounds  a  year  as  a  performer  and  at  least  twenty  pounds 
more  as  a  playwright,  with  possibly  some  slight  additional 


1 84        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

income  from  the  sale  of  his  poems  (which  were  repeatedly 
reprinted).  Allowing  for  the  greater  purchasing  power  of 
money  in  those  days,  we  may  assume  that  this  gave  Shak- 
spere  an  annual  income  about  equivalent  to  five  thousand 
dollars  to-day.  Later  the  price  paid  for  plays  rose,  and 
by  that  time  Shakspere  had  become  one  of  the  partners 
in  the  theater.  When  the  Globe  was  built,  in  1599,  it  was 
leased  to  certain  associated  actors,  of  whom  Shakspere 
was  one;  and  the  profits  were  to  be  divided  into  sixteen 
shares,  of  which  Shakspere  certainly  had  one,  and  possibly 
one  and  a  half  or  even  two.  (It  may  be  noted  that  Moliere 
was  also  a  sharer  of  the  profits  of  the.  company  with 
which  he  acted  and  which  produced  all  his  plays;  and  it  is 
on  record  that  when  he  asked  to  have  two  shares  allotted 
to  him  the  request  was  granted  by  his  comrades.)  There 
is  a  likelihood  that  Shakspere  took  upon  himself  a  portion 
of  the  labor  of  stage-management  and  of  producing  new 
plays;  and  although  the  customs  of  the  Elizabethan  thea- 
ter made  this  task  less  burdensome  than  it  is  to-day,  still 
it  was  worthy  of  some  remuneration.  Sir  Sidney  Lee,  a 
most  competent  judge,  has  estimated  Shakspere's  annual 
income  in  the  final  years  of  his  career  in  London  before  he 
left  the  stage  altogether  for  return  to  Stratford  as  prob- 
ably about  six  hundred  pounds  a  year,  and  this  is  roughly 
equivalent  to  twenty-four  thousand  dollars  of  our  money. 
And  in  this  estimate  he  did  not  include  the  large  profits 
from  Shakspere's  two  shares  in  the  smaller  Blackfriars 
Theater  or  the  return  from  his  accumulated  savings. 
That  Shakspere  in  his  youth  had  gone  on  the  stage  as  an 
actor  proved  to  be  as  profitable  for  his  pocket  as  it  was 
helpful  to  his  mastery  of  stage-craft. 


CHAPTER  X 

SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS 
I 

It  would  be  interesting  if  we  could  also  ascertain  the 
names  of  the  original  performers  of  the  important  parts 
in  all  Shakspere's  plays.  Here  our  information  is  piti- 
ably scant.  There  were  in  those  days  no  printed  play- 
bills in  the  theater  itself;  and  there  were  no  theatrical 
criticisms  in  the  newspapers,  for  the  sufficient  reason 
that  there  were  no  newspapers.  When  a  play  was  pub- 
lished it  rarely  contained  a  list  of  the  characters  carry- 
ing on  its  plot;  in  the  First  Folio  such  a  list  is  ap- 
pended to  only  two  or  three  of  Shakspere's  pieces,  the 
' Winter's  Tale'  for  one  and  the  second  part  of  'Henry  IV 
for  another.  And  even  when  the  list  of  characters  is 
given  there  is  no  indication  of  the  names  of  the  per- 
formers who  played  the  several  parts. 

Yet  even  if  our  information  is  scant,  it  is  not  wholly 
lacking.  From  an  elegy  written  upon  the  death  of  Rich- 
ard Burbage  we  learn,  what  we  might  have  inferred  with- 
out this  positive  assurance,  that  he  was  the  performer  of 
Hamlet,  Othello  and  King  Lear,  and  another  poem  of  the 
period  authorizes  us  to  believe  that  he  also  played  Rich- 
ard III.  In  the  First  Folio  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  in  the 
fourth  act  the  stage-direction  reads  "enter  Peter,"  whereas 
in  the  second  and  third  quartos  the  stage-direction  reads 
"enter  Will  Kempe";  and  we  have  no  right  to  doubt  that 
Kemp  was  the  original  actor  of  Peter.     In  'Much  Ado 

185 


1 86        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

about  Nothing'  a  similar  slip  supplies  us  with  two  simi- 
lar identifications  of  an  actor  with  a  part:  in  the  fourth 
act,  when  the  watch  enters,  the  speeches  of  Dogberry  and 
Verges  are  assigned  to  Kemp  and  Cowley,  the  names  of 
the  performers  themselves  carelessly  appearing  in  place 
of  the  names  of  the  characters  they  were  impersonating. 
And  earlier  in  the  same  play,  in  the  second  act,  the  stage- 
direction  reads,  "enter  Prince,  Leonato,  Claudio  and 
Jacke  Wilson,"  which  is  evidence  that  Wilson  was  the 
performer  of  the  part  of  Balthasar  (who  sings  "Sigh  no 
more,  ladies;  sigh  no  more").  Another  slip  of  the  same 
kind  informs  us  that  the  servant  who  enters  in  the  third 
act  of  the  *  Taming  of  the  Shrew'  was  played  by  an  actor 
known  in  the  theater  as  "Nick." 

It  may  be  noted  that  Will  Kemp  resigned  about  1598, 
and  that  his  place  was  taken  by  Robert  Armin,  who  seems 
to  have  been  connected  with  the  company  off  and  on  for 
at  least  ten  years.  In  the  dedication  of  a  play  of  Armin's 
published  in  1609  he  discloses  the  fact  that  he  had  imper- 
sonated Dogberry;  it  is  likely,  therefore,  that  he  succeeded 
to  all  of  Kemp's  characters  when  he  joined  the  company 
after  Kemp  had  left  it. 

In  the  quarto  edition  of  Ben  Jonson's  'Every  Man  in 
His  Humour,'  printed  in  1603,  there  is  a  list  of  the  actors 
who  appeared  in  this  play:  "Will.  Shakspeare,  Aug.  Phil- 
ips, Hen.  Condel,  Will.  Slye,  Will  Kempe,  Ric.  Burbage, 
J.  Hemings,  Thos.  Pope,  Chr.  Beeston,  and  John  Duke." 
The  play  had  been  produced  by  the  company  to  which 
Shakspere  belonged  in  1598,  and  the  list  given  in  1603  is 
probably  an  incomplete  roster  of  the  company  as  it  was  in 
1598,  since  it  includes  Kemp,  who  seems  to  have  with- 
drawn shortly  after  Jonson's  comedy  was  first  performed. 
When  Jonson's  tragedy  of  'Sejanus'  was  published  in 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  187 

1605,  the  final  page  tells  us  that  "this  Tragaedie  was  first 
acted  in  the  yeere  1603  By  the  King's  Majesties  Ser- 
vants" and  that  "the  principal  Tragaedians  were  Ric. 
Burbadge,  Aug.  Philips,  Will.  Sly,  Joh.  Lowin,  Will. 
Shakes-peare,  Joh.  Hemings,  Hen.  Condel,  Alex.  Cooke." 
Mention  must  be  made  also  of  the  fact  that  the  'Seven 
Deadly  Sins'  (acted  in  all  probability  in  1592)  had  among 
its  performers  Burbage,  Philips,  Pope,  Condell,  Cowley, 
Sly,  Duke  and  Bryan. 

In  the  First  Folio  we  have  a  list  of  "the  names  of  the 
Principall  Actors  in  all  these  Plays"  arranged  in  two 
columns: 

William  Shakespeare  Samuel  Gilburne 

Richard  Burbage  Robert  Armin 

John  Hemmings  William  Ostler 

Augustine  Phillips  Nathan  Field 

William  Kempt  John  Underwood 

Thomas  Poope  Nicholas  Tooley 

George  Bryan  William  Ecclestone 

Henry  Condell  Joseph  Taylor 

William  Slye  Robert  Benfield 

Richard  Cowly  Robert  Goughe 

John  Lowine  Richard  Robinson 

Samuell  Crosse  John  Shancke 

Alexander  Cooke  John  Rice 

But  this  list  is  not  absolutely  complete,  since  it  omits 
the  names  of  John  Duke,  Christopher  Beeston  and  John 
Sinkler.  Also  to  be  noted  is  the  fact  that  it  contains  the 
names  of  actors  probably  not  in  the  company  at  the 
same  time;  Kemp  and  Armin,  for  example.  It  may  be 
doubted  whether  the  company  ever  numbered  as  many  as 
twenty-six,  even  at  its  fullest  strength.  The  usual  num- 
ber was  probably  not  more  than  fifteen.     A  single  actor 


188         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

would  often  appear  in  two  or  more  of  the  less  important 
parts.  The  suggestion  has  even  been  made  that  one 
actor,  possibly  Wilson,  thus  "doubled"  Cordelia  and  the 
Fool. 

II 

Apparently  it  was  about  1590  that  Shakspere  joined 
the  company,  when  certain  of  its  leading  members  had 
already  been  associated  for  some  years.  It  had  been  or- 
ganized before  the  Burbages  built  the  first  Theater  in 
1576,  the  materials  of  which  were  used  in  the  erection  of 
the  Globe  twenty  years  later.  It  bore  various  titles, 
being  called  Lord  Strange's  men,  Lord  Derby's  and  Lord 
Hunsdon's,  and  the  Lord  Chamberlain's  company;  and 
finally,  in  1603,  after  the  accession  of  James,  it  was  au- 
thorized to  call  itself  the  King's  Players.  In  London,  it 
acted  not  only  at  the  Theater  and  the  Rose,  and  then  at 
the  Globe,  but  still  later  also  at  the  Blackfriars.  It  went 
on  frequent  strolling  expeditions  in  the  provinces;  and  it 
may  have  given  performances  in  Stratford  when  Shak- 
spere was  still  a  resident  in  his  native  town.  But  although 
it  altered  its  name  from  time  to  time,  and  although  it 
acted  in  different  places,  it  retained  its  membership  for  a 
score  of  years  after  1590  with  comparatively  few  changes. 
It  seems  to  have  been  well  chosen  at  the  start  and  to  have 
been  skilfully  recruited  as  vacancies  were  caused  by  re- 
tirement or  by  death.  Its  half  dozen  or  half  score  chief 
members,  the  "sharers"  or  associated  managers,  who 
hired  the  boys  and  subordinate  performers,  were  not  only 
good  actors,  they  were  also  men  of  good  character  bound 
by  ties  of  friendship  as  well  as  of  interest.  Its  leading 
actors  were  partners  in  the  management  and  in  the  very 
considerable  profits  of  the  enterprise.     In  fact,  in  its  or- 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  189 

ganization,  in  the  qualities  of  its  constituent  elements,  in 
its  enduring  solidarity  it  bears  a  striking  likeness  to  the 
company  which  Moliere  brought  back  to  Paris  in  1658 
and  which  still  survives  as  the  Comedie-Francaise.  The- 
atrical conditions  in  London,  when  Shakspere  retired  in 
the  first  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century,  did  not 
widely  differ  from  those  in  Paris  when  Moliere  died 
toward  the  end  of  the  third  quarter  of  that  century;  but 
theatrical  conditions  then  were  very  different  from  the- 
atrical conditions  now.  To-day,  in  the  first  quarter  of 
the  twentieth  century,  there  is  not  to  be  seen  in  London 
or  in  New  York  a  single  permanent  company,  and  in  Paris 
there  is  but  one  which  is  substantially  the  same  year  after 
year. 

Nowadays  a  special  company  is  engaged  for  every  new 
play  that  is  produced  and  for  every  important  revival. 
To-day  there  is  a  vast  body  of  unemployed  actors  and 
actresses  from  whom  the  manager  can  select  the  per- 
formers best  suited  to  the  several  parts  of  the  piece  he  is 
about  to  bring  out;  and  the  dramatist  composes  his  play, 
having  in  mind  special  actors  only  for  one  or  more  of  the 
salient  characters,  knowing  that  there  will  be  no  difficulty 
in  securing  fairly  satisfactory  performers  for  the  less  im- 
portant parts.  But  in  Shakspere's  time,  as  in  Moliere's, 
there  were  at  call  few  disengaged  performers  of  merit; 
most  of  the  available  actors  were  already  attached  to  one 
or  another  of  the  existing  companies  in  London  or  in  the 
provinces.  The  dramatist,  therefore,  composed  his  play 
specifically  for  the  members  of  some  one  of  these  com- 
panies, perforce  adjusting  the  parts  to  the  performers  who 
were  originally  to  undertake  them,  and  carefully  refraining 
from  the  introduction  of  any  part  for  which  there  was  not 
a  fit  performer  already  in  the  company.     What  is  now 


190        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

known  as  a  "special  engagement"  was  then  impossible, 
because  it  would  not  have  been  profitable,  since  the  com- 
pany kept  all  its  successful  plays  in  repertory,  ready  for 
immediate  performance  in  its  own  theater  in  London  and 
in  any  convenient  hall  in  the  country  towns  when  it  went 
on  its  frequent  strolling  excursions.  In  London  fifteen  to 
twenty  new  plays  were  produced  by  a  company  every 
season;  and  no  one  of  them  had  more  than  fifteen  or 
twenty  performances,  scattered  through  the  year,  and 
never  consecutive. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  Moliere  has  no  maternal 
love  in  any  of  his  plays,  because  his  company  did  not  con- 
tain any  "old  woman";  and  the  elderly  females  who  do 
appear  now  and  again  in  his  comedies  were  all  of  them 
highly  colored  so  that  they  could  be  performed  by  a 
male  actor,  in  accord  with  medieval  tradition  still  sur- 
viving in  the  French  theater  during  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. Shakspere,  like  Moliere,  composed  all  his  plays 
for  one  particular  company,  that  to  which  he  himself 
belonged.  We  may  rest  assured  that  Shakspere  and 
Moliere  rarely  wrote  any  part  for  which  there  was  not  a 
proper  performer  already  in  the  company.  We  may  feel 
certain  also  that  Shakspere,  like  Moliere,  fitted  the  char- 
acters in  his  comedies  and  his  tragedies  to  the  special 
actors  for  whom  he  intended  them.  As  the  repertory  was 
large  and  as  the  program  was  changed  daily,  it  is  prob- 
able that  a  prominent  actor  was  not  unwilling  now  and 
again  to  appear  in  a  part  of  less  prominence  than  his  im- 
portance in  the  theater  would  warrant;  and  it  may  be 
noted  that  this  was  the  practice  in  the  famous  Meiningen 
company  toward  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

We  know  very  little  about  the  histrionic  ability  of  the 
members  of  the  company  for  which   Shakspere  wrote. 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  191 

We  have  no  record  of  the  manner  in  which  Burbage  acted 
Othello  and  Lear,  or  of  the  method  of  Kemp  in  Peter  and 
Dogberry.  Yet  with  the  evidence  of  Shakspere's  plays 
before  us,  and  with  our  knowledge  of  the  extraordinary 
demands  they  make  upon  the  performers,  we  are  justified 
in  believing  that  the  company  must  have  been  very  strong 
indeed,  rich  in  actors  of  varied  accomplishment.  We 
should  have  the  same  conviction  in  regard  to  Moliere's 
company,  on  the  sole  testimony  of  his  plays,  even  if  we 
were  without  the  abundant  contemporary  evidence  to 
the  merits  of  Moliere  and  his  wife,  of  La  Grange  and 
Madeleine  Bejart.  By  the  fact  that  Shakspere  wrote 
Othello  and  Lear  and  Hamlet  for  Burbage  we  are  debarred 
from  any  right  to  doubt  that  Burbage  was  a  great  trage- 
dian. The  parts  that  Shakspere  composed  for  Kemp,  and 
later  for  Armin,  may  be  taken  as  proof  positive  that  these 
two  actors  had  a  broad  vein  of  humor  like  that  which 
Charles  Lamb  relished  in  Dowton.  The  swift  succession 
of  Portia  and  Beatrice,  Rosalind  and  Viola,  is  irrefraga- 
ble testimony  to  the  histrionic  capacity  of  the  shaven  lad 
who  impersonated  these  lovely  creatures  one  after  another. 
A  good  company  it  must  have  been,  that  for  which 
Shakspere  wrote  his  twoscore  histories  and  comedies  and 
tragedies,  filled  with  superb  parts  stimulating  to  the  am- 
bition of  the  actors  who  were  his  associates;  and  it  was  a 
good  all-round  company  also,  versatile  and  energetic. 

That  Shakspere  fitted  these  actors  with  parts,  that  he 
adjusted  his  characters  to  the  capacity  of  the  performers, 
that  he  was  moved  in  his  choice  of  subject  by  his  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  histrionic  capability  of  his  fellow-actors, 
and  perhaps  also  by  their  expressed  desire  for  more  am- 
bitious opportunities,  this  is  surely  beyond  question,  since 
we  know  that  it  is  just  what  Moliere  did  in  his  day  and 


192         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

just  what  every  dramatist  has  done  and  must  do.  The 
author  of  'Ralph  Roister  Doister'  was  head-master  of 
Eton;  and  he  put  together  that  piece  of  boisterous  fun- 
making  for  the  crude  acting  of  his  robustious  young 
scholars.  Lyly's  more  delicate  comedies  were  most  of 
them  composed  for  performance  by  choir-boys;  and  they 
are  found  to  be  devoid  of  any  violence  of  emotion  which 
might  be  beyond  the  power  of  youthful  inexperience. 
What  may  be  observed  in  the  seventeenth  century  can 
be  seen  also  in  the  nineteenth;  and  the  best  of  Labiche's 
farces  were  not  more  closely  adjusted  to  the  company  at 
the  Palais  Royal  than  were  the  later  plays  of  the  younger 
Dumas  adjusted  to  the  incomparable  assembly  of  actors 
at  the  Theatre  Francais. 

Just  as  Mr.  Crummies,  having  bought  a  pump  cheap, 
insisted  upon  the  introduction  of  that  implement  into  the 
next  play  which  Nicholas  Nickleby  adapted  for  his  com- 
pany, so  every  dramatist  is  moved,  perhaps  more  or  less 
unconsciously,  to  utilize  the  gifts  of  the  actors  for  whom 
he  is  working.  If  one  of  them  is  a  trained  singer,  a  Jack 
Wilson,  then  he  is  tempted  to  write  in  a  part  for  that 
performer  and  so  give  him  one  or  more  songs.  This  fact 
was  seized  by  the  acute  intellect  of  James  Spedding,  who 
once  wrote  a  letter  to  Furnivall  in  criticism  of  the  latter's 
attempt  to  classify  Shakspere's  plays  in  chronological  or- 
der in  accordance  with  the  mood  of  the  dramatist  at  the 
time  when  they  were  written.  Spedding  insisted  that  the 
distinguishing  feature  of  every  play  "would  depend  upon 
many  things  besides  the  author's  state  of  mind.  It  would 
depend  upon  the  story  which  he  had  to  tell;  and  the 
choice  of  the  story  would  depend  upon  the  requirements 
of  the  theater,  the  taste  of  the  public,  the  popularity  of 
the  different  actors,  the  strength  of  the  company.    A  new 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  193 

part  might  be  wanted  for  Burbage  or  Kemp.  The  two 
boys  that  acted  Hermia  and  Helena — the  tall  and  the 
short  one — or  the  two  men  who  were  so  alike  that  they 
might  be  mistaken  for  each  other,  might  want  new  pieces 
to  appear  in;  and  so  on." 

The  vice  of  the  narrowly  philosophic  criticism  of  Shak- 
spere,  which  was  so  prevalent  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
lies  in  its  consideration  of  his  characters  solely  and  exclu- 
sively as  characters.  They  are  characters,  of  course,  but 
they  are  also  parts  prepared  for  particular  actors.  They 
form  a  succession  of  magnificent  parts,  making  the  most 
varied  demand  upon  these  actors.  They  are  parts,  first  of 
all,  conceived  in  consonance  with  their  author's  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  histrionic  abilities  of  his  fellow-players, 
even  if  every  one  of  them  is  also  a  character,  subtler  and 
broader  and  deeper  than  any  mere  part  needs  to  be.  In 
devising  these  parts  Shakspere  was  fitting  the  performers 
of  the  company  to  which  he  belonged,  even  if  he  was  also 
availing  himself  of  the  opportunity  to  body  forth  his  own 
vision  of  life. 

Ill 

When  we  have  once  grasped  the  significance  of  the  rela- 
tion of  the  author  and  the  actor  our  disappointment  is 
redoubled  that  we  know  so  little  about  the  various  mem- 
bers of  Shakspere's  company.  Our  acquaintance  with  the 
career  of  Coquelin  helps  us  to  understand  the  structure 
of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  just  as  our  familiarity  with  the 
needs  of  Macready  as  an  actor-manager  help  to  eludicate 
the  qualities  of  'Richelieu'  and  'Money.'  But  we  do  not 
know  Burbage  and  Kemp,  Heming  and  Armin,  as  we 
know  Macready  and  Coquelin.  Instead  of  being  able  to 
explain  their  parts  in  some  measure  by  their  personalities 


i94        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  by  their  abilities,  we  are  forced  to  guess  at  their  per- 
sonalities and  their  abilities  by  an  analysis  of  the  parts 
which  Shakspere  intrusted  to  them.  And  here  again  we 
are  at  sea,  since  we  lack  detailed  information  as  to  the 
parts  they  severally  performed. 

Yet  there  are  a  few  things  which  we  may  fairly  infer, 
without  involving  ourselves  in  the  fog  of  dangerous  con- 
jecture. If  Burbage  was  the  original  impersonator  of 
Hamlet  and  Lear,  of  Othello  and  Richard  III,  we  may 
assume  that  he  was  also  the  original  performer  of  all 
Shakspere's  tragic  heroes,  of  Romeo  and  Richard  II,  Mac- 
beth and  Brutus.  Burbage  played  early  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  all  the  parts  which  were  undertaken 
toward  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  by  Booth  and 
Irving — with  the  possible  exception  only  of  Shylock, 
which  seems  to  have  been  in  its  author's  intent  a  serio- 
comic character,  at  once  grim  and  grotesque,  and  which 
therefore  might  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  actor  who  had  ap- 
peared as  Falstaff  or  else  to  the  habitual  impersonator  of 
villains.  Burbage  left  behind  him  the  reputation  of  the 
foremost  tragedian  of  his  time;  and  since  he  was  intrusted 
by  Shakspere  with  these  overwhelming  characters,  one 
after  another,  he  must  have  been  a  great  actor,  noble  in 
bearing,  eloquent  in  delivery,  passionate  and  versatile. 
As  he  grew  older,  so  did  the  characters  which  Shakspere 
composed  for  him  to  act,  Romeo  having  been  written  for 
him  in  his  ardent  and  energetic  youth,  while  Lear  was 
prepared  later  in  his  riper  maturity.  After  his  death,  in 
1619,  his  parts  seem  to  have  been  divided  between 
Lowin  and  Taylor. 

Just  as  we  may  feel  safe  in  assuming  that  Burbage  im- 
personated all  Shakspere's  tragic  heroes,  because  we  know 
that  he  played  Hamlet  and  Othello,  so  we  are  justified  in 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  195 

assigning  a  succession  of  comic  characters  in  Shakspere's 
earliest  comedies  to  Kemp  because  of  our  knowledge  that 
he  appeared  as  Peter  and  Dogberry.  There  is  a  strong 
family  likeness  between  Peter  and  a  group  of  other  low- 
comedy  parts,  composed  at  no  great  interval  before  or 
after  'Romeo  and  Juliet' — simple  figures  of  fun,  mere 
"clowns,"  as  they  were  then  called,  quick  in  quips,  but 
lacking  altogether  the  mellower  humor  of  Shakspere's 
later  comic  characters.  Since  Kemp  was  the  original 
Peter,  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  he  was  also  one  of 
the  two  Dromios  and  one  of  the  two  Gobbos,  and  that 
he  appeared  either  as  Costard  or  Dull  in  'Love's  Labour's 
Lost,'  and  either  as  Launce  or  Speed  in  the  'Two  Gentle- 
men of  Verona.'  And  we  can  find  confirmation  for  this 
surmise  in  the  disappearance  of  this  sort  of  part  from 
Shakspere's  plays  after  Kemp  left  the  company,  to  be  re- 
placed by  Armin.  No  doubt  Armin  took  over  all  these 
earlier  parts  whenever  the  older  plays  were  performed; 
but  in  the  new  plays  the  corresponding  characters — 
Touchstone,  for  example,  the  Grave-digger  in  'Hamlet' 
and  the  Porter  in  'Macbeth' — are  less  frivolous,  almost 
graver  in  their  method.  Nowadays  the  comedian  who 
acts  Touchstone  also  acts  Sir  Toby  Belch,  and  it  is 
inherently  likely  that  Armin  was  the  original  of  that 
unctuously  humorous  character,  although  this  part  may 
have  been  cast  to  the  original  performer  of  FalstafF  (pos- 
sibly Heming).  There  is  to  be  noted  in  Moliere's  plays 
a  curious  parallel  to  this  modification  of  the  low-comedy 
parts  in  Shakspere's  plays  after  Armin  had  succeeded 
Kemp.  Moliere  composed  all  his  earlier  soubrettes,  his 
exuberant  serving-maids,  for  Madeleine  Bejart;  and  after 
her  death,  when  her  place  was  taken  by  Mademoiselle 
Beauval,  who  had  less  authority  and  a  more  contagious 


196         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

gaiety,  the  soubrettes  in  these  later  comedies  change  in 
tone  to  adjust  themselves  to  the  different  gifts  of  the  new 
actress. 

One  other  piece  of  information  is  also  in  our  possession: 
the  Balthasar,  who  sings  in  'Much  Ado,'  was  played  by 
Jack  Wilson.  From  this  we  may  fairly  assume  that  Wil- 
son also  appeared  as  Amiens,  who  sings  in  'As  you  Like 
it,'  and  as  Feste,  who  sings  in  'Twelfth  Night.'  This 
assumption  is  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  'Much  Ado,' 
'As  you  Like  it'  and  'Twelfth  Night'  are  closely  related, 
having  been  composed  rapidly  one  after  the  other.  Then, 
if  we  choose,  we  may  risk  a  more  daring  speculation — 
that  Wilson  was  also  the  actor  who  created  a  little  later 
the  part  of  the  Fool  in  'King  Lear,'  since  this  character  is 
called  upon  for  frequent  snatches  of  song. 

In  dealing  with  Burbage  and  Wilson,  with  Kemp  and 
Armin,  we  are  on  fairly  solid  ground;  that  is  to  say,  we 
are  making  inferences  from  known  facts.  But  when  we 
desire  to  push  our  investigations  further  our  footing  is  less 
secure;  yet  it  is  not  impossible  to  venture  a  little  dis- 
tance in  advance.  At  least,  there  are  a  few  questions  which 
we  may  put  to  ourselves  with  advantage,  even  though 
we  may  not  be  completely  satisfied  by  the  best  answers 
that  we  can  find.  For  example,  the  original  performer  of 
Falstaff — Heming  or  another — was  possibly  the  original 
performer  of  Shylock,  and  probably  the  original  performer 
of  Sir  Toby.  This  creates  a  likelihood  that  he  had  also 
impersonated  Bottom.  It  is  also  not  unlikely  that  he  was 
intrusted  with  the  Dromio  that  Kemp  did  not  play,  and 
also  with  either  Launce  or  Speed,  Costard  or  Dull.  And 
he  seems  to  be  the  performer  who  would  naturally  be 
called  upon  later  to  impersonate  Caliban. 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  197 


IV 


We  can  also  get  a  little  light  upon  the  probable  organi- 
zation of  the  company  at  the  Globe  when  Shakspere  was  a 
member  of  it  by  considering  the  organization  of  Drury 
Lane  when  Sheridan  was  its  manager  and  when  the  stock- 
company  system  was  in  its  prime.  Indeed,  a  similar  or- 
ganization is  to  be  observed  to-day  in  the  many  minor 
stock  companies  scattered  throughout  the  United  States. 
The  governing  principle  in  Drury  Lane  and  in  the  mod- 
ern theaters  occupied  by  stock  companies  is  that  every 
one  of  the  several  actors  has  his  own  "line  of  business,"  as 
it  is  called;  that  is  to  say,  he  confines  himself  to  a  certain 
definite  class  of  characters.  When  an  old  play  is  revived, 
and  even  when  a  new  play  is  produced,  the  actor  is  gen- 
erally able  to  recognize  at  a  glance  the  part  to  which  he 
is  entitled.  The  "leading  man"  and  the  "leading  lady" 
expect,  of  course,  to  impersonate  the  hero  and  the  heroine. 
The  "low  comedian"  is  ready  at  once  to  undertake  the 
broadly  comic  character,  and  the  "soubrette"  (or  "cham- 
bermaid") is  equally  ready  to  assume  the  corresponding 
female  part.  The  villain  falls  to  the  lot  of  the  "heavy 
man."  The  "old  man"  and  the  "old  woman"  naturally 
assume  the  more  elderly  characters.  The  "  light  comedy  " 
part  is  the  privilege  of  one  actor,  and  the  "character  part" 
is  the  duty  of  another.  In  a  large  company  there  would 
be  also  a  "second  low  comedian,"  a  "second  old  man," 
and  so  on,  besides  several  trustworthy  performers  known 
as  "responsible  utilities." 

This  organization  is  efficient,  and  its  influence  can  be 
detected  very  clearly  in  the  English  drama  until  the  final 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  the  stock-company 


198         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

system  was  abolished  in  the  more  important  theaters  of 
London  and  New  York.  It  was  not  absolutely  rigid,  of 
course;  and  now  and  again  an  actor  of  exceptional  power 
and  range  did  not  hesitate  to  undertake  parts  not  strictly 
in  his  own  "line  of  business."  John  Kemble,  for  example, 
the  foremost  tragedian  of  his  time,  liked  to  appear  in  the 
light  comedy  part  of  Charles  Surface,  a  performance 
which  was  wittily  described  as  "Charles's  Martyrdom." 
His  brother,  Charles  Kemble,  the  foremost  light  comedian 
of  his  time,  had  an  infelicitous  aspiration  for  tragic  char- 
acters. But  even  if  this  method  of  distributing  the  sev- 
eral parts  in  a  play  among  the  several  members  of  the 
company  was  not  absolutely  fixt  and  final,  it  was  gener- 
ally acceptable.  The  departures  from  the  rules  were  in- 
frequent in  Drury  Lane  under  Sheridan;  and  we  have  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  they  were  quite  as  infrequent  in  the 
Globe  when  Shakspere  was  writing  his  plays  for  its  com- 
pany. 

The  line  of  business  which  any  one  of  Shakspere's 
fellow-actors  undertook  would  be  the  same,  of  course, 
whether  the  play  were  written  by  Shakspere  himself  or  by 
another  playwright.  Therefore,  if  we  could  discover  any 
part  played  by  any  one  of  these  actors  in  a  piece  not  by 
Shakspere,  we  might  guess  at  the  line  of  business  he  was 
in  the  habit  of  playing  and  thus  we  might  infer  that  he 
may  have  been  the  original  performer  of  those  Shak- 
sperian  characters  which  plainly  belong  to  the  particular 
line  of  business.  Now,  there  is  a  little  evidence  of  this 
sort.  We  know,  for  example,  that  Burbage  played  Hi- 
eronimo  in  the  'Spanish  Tragedy';  and  this  would  give 
us  warrant  for  believing  that  he  played  Hamlet  and 
Othello,  even  if  we  had  not  more  emphatic  testimony. 
We  know  also  that  Condell  played  the  Cardinal  in  Web- 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  199 

ster's  'Duchess  of  Malfi,'  which  is  a  "heavy"  part,  a 
stage  villain  of  the  deepest  dye.  If  we  may  assume  from 
this  that  Condell  was  the  regular  performer  of  "heavies," 
then  we  may  venture  to  ascribe  to  him  not  a  few  of 
Shakspere's  villains — Edmund  in  'King  Lear'  and,  above 
all,  Iago.  We  may  even  go  further  and  suggest  the  prob- 
ability that  he  was  also  the  original  performer  of  Don 
John  in  'Much  Ado,'  of  the  usurping  Duke  in  'As  you 
Like  it'  and  of  the  King  in  'Hamlet/ 

Unfortunately,  we  have  no  clue  as  significant  as  this  to 
guide  us  to  a  guess  as  to  the  original  performer  of  another 
line  of  business,  very  important  in  Shakspere's  plays 
— that  of  "juvenile  lead"  or  "light  comedy."  Some 
of  the  parts  seem  to  belong  to  one  group  and  some  to 
another,  yet  they  were  probably  played  by  the  same 
actor  in  Shakspere's  company,  since  they  are  now  gen- 
erally undertaken  by  the  same  actor  in  our  modern  com- 
panies. These  are  the  parts  in  which  Charles  Kemble 
excelled;  they  are  the  parts  in  which  Edwin  Adams  and 
Lawrence  Barrett  supported  Booth  and  in  which  Terriss 
and  Alexander  supported  Irving.  In  the  tragedies  these 
characters  are  Laertes,  Richmond,  Cassio  and  Mercutio; 
and  in  the  comedies  they  are  Gratiano,  Claudio  and  Or- 
sino.  And  the  same  actor  would  logically  be  intrusted 
also  with  Faulconbridge,  with  Hotspur,  and  probably  with 
Bolingbroke.  These  are  most  of  them  characters  which 
require  for  their  adequate  rendition  youth  and  fire,  vigor 
and  vivacity,  wit  and  grace.  We  may  never  discover  the 
name  of  the  actor  who  created  these  parts,  but  that  they 
were  all  of  them  created  by  one  and  the  same  performer 
seems  highly  probable.  To  those  who  are  familiar  with 
the  inner  workings  of  the  theater  there  will  be  nothing 
fanciful  in  the  suggestion  that  the  "tag" — the  final  speech 


2oo         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

— of  the  *  Merchant  of  Venice '  may  have  been  given  to 
Gratiano  as  some  compensation  to  this  actor  for  the  early 
killing  off  of  Mercutio,  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet/  the  play 
which  almost  immediately  preceded  the  'Merchant  of 
Venice/  In  general  the  tag  is  given  by  Shakspere  to  the 
most  important  of  the  surviving  characters. 

As  to  the  several  boys  who  were  intrusted  with  Shak- 
spere's  women  we  are  absolutely  in  the  dark.  We  can  see 
with  Spedding  that  there  were  in  company  at  one  time 
two  lads  who  appeared  as  the  comedy  heroines,  one  of 
them  taller  than  the  other;  LeBeau  tells  Orlando  that 
Celia  is  taller  than  Rosalind,  and  Hero  is  repeatedly  called 
short.  To  one  or  another  of  these  boys  were  committed 
also  Portia  and  Jessica,  Viola  and  Olivia,  Mrs.  Page  and 
Anne  Page.  Mrs.  Ford  must  have  fallen  to  the  lot  of  a 
third  lad,  who  was  later  to  display  his  captivating  humor 
as  Maria  in  'Twelfth  Night/  having  already  appeared  as 
the  laughing  Nerissa  in  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  and  as 
the  giggling  Audrey  in  'As  you  Like  it/  But  which  of 
these  three  boys  was  bold  enough  to  undertake  Cleopatra 
or  Lady  Macbeth? 

It  is  not  difficult  to  believe  that  the  Queen  Margaret 
who  curses  so  copiously  was  impersonated  by  the  young 
fellow  who  was  soon  after  to  appear  as  Kate  the  curst. 
What  became  of  this  lad,  and  of  the  others  also,  when 
their  voices  cracked  and  they  grew  to  manhood?  Prob- 
ably most  of  them  remained  in  the  company  and  took  to 
male  characters,  returning  on  occasion  to  the  other  sex 
when  there  arrived  a  strongly  marked  part  for  an  "old 
woman" — a  part  which  did  not  demand  actual  youth. 
One  such  actor,  boy  or  man,  must  have  created  the  Nurse 
in  'Romeo  and  Juliet/  the  various  Mrs.  Quicklys  in  the 
two  parts  of  'Henry  IV/  in  'Henry  V  and  in  the  'Merry 


SHAKSPERE'S  ACTORS  201 

Wives,'  and  Mrs.  Overdone  in  'Measure  for  Measure/ 
characters  closely  akin  in  their  oil}*  humor. 

A  few  further  suggestions  may  be  risked.  It  seems 
highly  probable  that  the  performer  who  was  the  original 
Slender  in  the  'Merry  Wives'  was  also  the  creator  of  Sir 
Andrew  Aguecheek  in  'Twelfth  Night,'  of  Le  Beau  in  'As 
you  Like  it'  and  of  Osric  in  'Hamlet.'  We  may  also  ven- 
ture the  surmise  that  the  actor  who  created  Christopher 
Sly  in  the  induction  of  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew'  had 
also  created  one  of  the  strongly  marked  comic  characters 
in  the  Falstaff  plays,  Xym  or  Pistol,  but  more  probably 
Bardolph. 

These  scattered  suggestions  may  seem  fantastic.  They 
are  suggestions  only,  hypotheses  which  may  be  veri- 
fied by  further  investigation  or  which  may  be  contra- 
dicted by  more  diligent  research.  The  inquiry  here  initi- 
ated modestly  can  be  pushed  further;  for  example,  we 
have  some  information  as  to  the  actors  who  personated 
the  chief  parts  in  certain  of  the  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
plays,  and  a  study  of  these  parts  may  indicate  the  lines 
of  business  they  were  in  the  habit  of  playing  and  thus 
point  to  their  possible  Shaksperian  parts.  Such  an  in- 
quiry is  likely  to  increase  our  knowledge  of  the  theatrical 
conditions  under  which  Shakspere  worked  and  to  which 
he  had  to  conform. 


CHAPTER  XI 
'HAMLET' 


The  four  romantic-comedies  were  the  natural  out- 
flowering  from  Shakspere's  earlier  and  less  ambitious  ef- 
forts to  combine  sentiment  and  humor;  'Love's  Labour's 
Lost'  made  the  path  straight  for  'Much  Ado,'  and 
'Twelfth  Night'  declares  itself  as  a  logical  growth  from 
the  'Two  Gentlemen.'  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  which  pre- 
ceded the  romantic-comedies,  had  had  no  such  forerun- 
ners; it  disclosed  a  sudden  expansion  of  Shakspere's 
powers  in  a  field  into  which  he  had  not  before  entered; 
and  as  much  must  also  be  asserted  of  'Hamlet.'  Nothing 
that  he  had  composed  prior  to  the  production  of  'Hamlet' 
foretold  the  power  he  was  therein  to  display.  There  is 
scarcely  an  intimation  in  any  preceding  piece  of  the  great 
gifts  revealed  in  'Hamlet' — the  essential  energy  of  imag- 
ination which  gives  breadth  and  depth  to  the  tragedy  we 
accept  to-day  as  perhaps  his  most  significant  achieve- 
ment in  his  art.  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  stirs  the  heart,  but 
'Hamlet'  also  stimulates  the  mind  and  uplifts  the  soul. 

In  Shakspere's  career  'Hamlet'  is  almost  as  striking  a 
manifestation  of  the  ripening  of  his  genius  as  is  'Tartuffe' 
in  the  corresponding  career  of  Moliere.  Possibly  the  un- 
expectedness of  the  development  is  even  more  startling  in 
Moliere's  case  than  in  Shakspere's,  since  no  one  of  his 
earlier  plays  contained  any  promise  of  'TartufFe,'  whereas 

Shakspere    in    putting   forth   'Hamlet'   was  now   doing 

202 


'  HAMLET'  203 

skilfully  what  he  had  already  very  crudely  attempted  in 
'Titus  Andronicus';  that  is  to  say,  he  was  working  over 
an  earlier  revenge-play  of  an  already  established  popu- 
larity in  the  playhouse.  And  in  both  cases  the  older 
play  was  a  violent  tragedy-of-blood.  In  'Titus  An- 
dronicus' Shakspere  seems  to  have  been  content  merely 
to  revise  this  older  piece,  improving  it  in  detail,  no  doubt, 
but  leaving  it  very  much  as  he  found  it.  'Hamlet'  he 
made  over,  using  it  for  riper  self-expression. 

He  had  put  little  or  nothing  of  himself  into  'Titus 
Andronicus ' — so  little,  indeed,  that  few  of  us  would  be 
tempted  to  ascribe  the  piece  to  him  if  we  did  not  know  it 
to  be  his.  Into  'Hamlet'  as  a  play,  and  even  into  Ham- 
let as  a  character,  Shakspere,  as  we  cannot  help  feeling, 
put  more  of  himself  than  into  any  other  of  his  works.  Of 
course  we  have  no  right  ever  to  identify  a  dramatist  with 
any  of  his  characters,  however  irresistible  the  tempta- 
tion may  appear  now  and  again;  he  is  truly  a  dramatist 
only  because  he  is  able  to  breathe  the  breath  of  life  into 
creatures  utterly  unlike  himself.  Self-revelation  is  the 
province  of  the  lyric  poet,  not  of  the  dramatic;  and  yet 
there  are  to  be  discovered  characters  in  the  works  of  the 
greatest  dramatists  in  which  we  can  see — or  think  we 
can  see — unconscious  self-portraiture,  and  in  which  we 
believe  ourselves  to  be  catching  an  echo  of  the  poet's 
own  voice. 

Coquelin,  the  finest  interpreter  of  Moliere  in  our  day, 
and  also  an  alert  student  of  Shakspere,  used  to  say  that 
three  times,  and  three  times  only,  had  Shakspere  not  been 
able  to  keep  himself  out  of  his  own  plays.  The  French 
comedian  held  that  in  the  fiery  ardor  of  Romeo,  Shakspere 
set  before  us  his  own  youthful  exuberance;  that  in  Ham- 
let we  have  Shakspere  in  the  full  flower  of  thoughtful  man- 


2o4        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

hood,  weighed  down  by  the  insoluble  problems  of  the  uni- 
verse; and  that  Prospero  serves  to  suggest  to  us  what 
Shakspere  became  in  the  disenchanted  and  tolerant  years 
just  before  his  retirement  from  the  stage.  Romeo,  Ham- 
let, Prospero,  each  of  these  in  its  turn  contains  some  por- 
tion of  the  poet  himself  at  varying  periods  of  his  mental 
and  moral  growth.  This  much  we  may  admit,  even  if  we 
acknowledge  the  danger  of  admitting  any  more  than  this, 
that  these  three  figures  appear  to  be  characteristic  of  the 
poet  himself  at  the  moment  when  they  were  projected 
by  him. 

II 

Shakspere  was  more  fortunate  in  ' Hamlet'  than  Moliere 
in  the  *  Misanthrope,'  perhaps  because  he  did  not  trouble 
to  invent  a  plot  for  the  play  in  which  he  was  to  put  even 
more  of  himself  than  Moliere  was  to  put  into  the  '  Misan- 
thrope.' In  fact,  it  is  a  wonderful  stroke  of  good  luck  that 
Shakspere  was  attracted  to  this  story  at  the  very  hour 
when  he  had  welling  up  within  him  the  feelings  and  the 
thoughts  that  Hamlet  was  to  utter.  He  may  have  turned 
to  it  of  his  own  accord,  or  he  may  have  been  urged  to  re- 
make the  old  play  by  his  fellow-managers.  He  finds  in  the 
older  i Hamlet'  (now  lost  to  us,  although  we  have  come  to 
a  fair  knowledge  of  its  elements)  not  only  an  alluring  story, 
but  also  a  plot  cleverly  put  together.  The  earlier  piece, 
derived  directly  from  a  French  tragic  tale  and  indirectly 
from  a  chronicler,  conformed  as  strictly  to  the  type  of  the 
revenge-play  as  the  'Spanish  Tragedy'  itself,  the  popu- 
larity of  which  it  rivaled.  The  play  Shakspere  makes  out 
of  this  old  piece  has  all  the  earmarks  of  the  tragedy-of- 
blood — the  revenge  motive,  the  dark  plottings,  the  as- 
sumed  insanity,  the   play-within-the-play,   the    frequent 


'  HAMLET'  205 

fights  and  the  incessant  assassinations.  Every  one  of 
these  elements  of  interest  Shakspere  retains  without  hesi- 
tation, and  yet  he  manages  somehow  to  purge  this  brutal 
farrago  of  its  cruel  horrors  and  to  bestow  on  the  tragedy 
he  made  out  of  this  melodrama  the  terror  proper  to 
tragedy.  He  so  transforms  'Hamlet'  that  it  abides  as 
an  enduring  example  of  the  truly  poetic  drama,  at  once 
dramatic  and  poetic.  The  philosophy  that  we  find  in  it, 
the  psychology,  the  poetry,  are  all  integral;  they  belong 
to  the  subject  as  he  sees  it;  they  are  not  externally 
applied. 

The  critic  who  once  asserted  that  the  skeleton  of  every 
good  play  is  a  pantomime  might  have  had  'Hamlet'  in 
mind  when  he  declared  this  truth.  The  visual  appeal  of 
the  story  itself,  of  the  swift  succession  of  its  interesting 
incidents,  would  be  effective  if  the  play  were  acted  before 
the  inmates  of  a  deaf-and-dumb  asylum,  or  if  it  were 
merely  projected  on  the  screen  of  a  moving-picture  show. 
From  the  admirable  opening  scene,  when  the  Ghost  ap- 
pears to  Horatio  and  Marcellus,  a  scene  which  takes  us  at 
once  into  the  core  of  the  action  up  to  the  performance  of 
the  play-within-a-play  which  Claudius  interrupts,  thus 
confirming  what  the  Ghost  had  told  Hamlet,  the  interest 
of  the  plot  steadily  becomes  tenser  and  tenser.  The  se- 
quence of  ingenious  situations  would  rivet  the  attention  of 
the  audience  even  if  the  characters  were  empty  puppets. 
The  essential  struggle,  the  clash  of  opposing  volitions,  is 
set  before  us  sharply  from  the  very  first,  and  we  wait  with 
anxiety  the  issue  of  the  contest.  The  background  is  un- 
failingly romantic  and  picturesque,  while  the  chief  char- 
acter is  a  fellow-creature  with  whom  we  can  sympathize. 
There  may  be  a  slight  relaxing  of  interest  in  the  fourth 
act  due  to  the  fact  that  attention  is  not  there  centered  on 


206         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Hamlet  himself.  But  the  action  tightens  again  as  it 
draws  toward  the  inevitable  end;  and  the  fencing-match 
with  the  envenomed  foils,  followed  by  the  poisoned  cup 
and  Hamlet's  killing  of  the  King  at  last — these  clear  the 
stage  for  the  entrance  of  young  Fortinbras  and  for  his 
eulogy  of  the  dead  prince,  a  final  episode  which  recalls 
that  diminuendo  of  tragic  intensity  characteristic  of  the 
final  moments  in  the  greatest  Greek  dramas  (more  espe- 
cially the  'CEdipus'  of  Sophocles). 

Shakspere  is  here  doing  what  Sophocles  had  done  before 
him;  he  is  taking  a  myth  familiar  to  the  audience  in  al- 
most all  its  details  and  telling  it  anew  with  a  deeper  mean- 
ing. He  is  not  taxing  his  invention,  but  employing  his 
imagination  on  the  nobler  task  of  interpreting  what  had 
been  invented  by  others.  In  itself  the  story  is  crudely 
melodramatic  and  the  characters  are  no  more  vital  than 
the  plot  required  them  to  be.  In  Shakspere's  hands  the 
plot  retains  all  the  adroitness  of  its  mechanism,  and  yet  it 
ceases  to  be  of  predominating  importance,  since  the  suc- 
ceeding situations  seem  now  to  be  caused  by  the  characters 
themselves,  who  bring  about  most  of  the  several  episodes 
one  after  another  by  sheer  force  of  their  several  individuali- 
ties. What  had  been  a  bare  and  barren  melodrama  be- 
comes now  a  true  tragedy,  lifted  up  into  the  lofty  ether 
of  eternal  poetry,  yet  without  leaving  behind  the  skeleton 
of  action  which  lends  strength  to  its  structure.  If  we  did 
not  know  the  contrary,  we  might  believe  that  Shak- 
spere, having  first  conceived  the  character  of  Hamlet,  had 
then  set  himself  to  compose  a  plot  in  which  this  character 
could  most  adequately  express  himself.  That  this  was  not 
Shakspere's  procedure  is  added  evidence  that  it  matters 
little  whether  a  dramatic  poet  begins  with  character  or 
with  plot,  so  long  as  he  ends  by  making  the  characters 


■  HAMLET '  207 

true  to  themselves  and  by  keeping  the  plot  subordinate 
to  them.  Shakspere  takes  a  story  amplified  and  articu- 
lated by  another  hand,  and  he  makes  this  his  own  by 
the  soaring  imagination  which  perceived  the  ulterior  sig- 
nificance of  the  enigmatic  figure  of  Hamlet  himself.  As 
it  stands,  the  play  is  what  it  is,  and  its  episodes  follow 
one  after  another  as  they  do  simply  because  Hamlet  is 
what  he  is. 

Ill 

Victor  Hugo  once  declared  that  there  were  three  classes 
of  playgoers — the  crowd,  which  demands  action;  women, 
who  want  emotion;  and  thinkers,  who  seek  for  character. 
To  all  three  of  these  classes  ' Hamlet'  is  satisfactory:  it  is 
incessant  in  action;  it  is  vibrating  with  passion;  and  it  is 
rich  in  character.  The  personality  of  Hamlet  himself  is 
at  once  permanent  and  universal.  Even  though  no  one 
of  us  has  been  called  upon  to  undertake  the  dread  task  of 
avenging  a  father's  murder,  we  can  all  see  ourselves  in 
Hamlet.  The  more  we  know  about  life  and  the  more  we 
feel  ourselves  baffled  by  its  inscrutability,  the  better  fitted 
we  are  to  understand  Hamlet  and  to  feel  with  him. 

And  yet  it  is  only  in  this  humanizing  of  Hamlet  himself 
that  Shakspere  exhibits  any  overt  originality.  All  the 
separate  elements  of  the  plot  were  familiar  to  Tudor  play- 
goers, not  only  in  the  drama  which  Shakspere  was  re- 
working, but  in  not  a  few  other  pieces  produced  immedi- 
ately before  'Hamlet.'  "Revenge,  directed  by  a  ghost, 
hesitation  on  the  part  of  the  hero,  insanity  real  or  feigned, 
intrigue,  copious  bloodshed,  a  secondary  revenge  plot, 
meditative  philosophizing  in  the  form  of  soliloquies,  were 
all  essential  elements,  probably  of  the  Kydian  'Hamlet,' 
certainly  of  several  other  revenge-plays,"  so  Professor 


2o8         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Thorndike  has  pointed  out.  "The  refusal  of  an  oppor- 
tunity to  kill  the  villain,  the  songs  and  wild  talk  of  a  mad 
woman,  the  murder  of  an  innocent  intruder,  scenes  in  a 
churchyard,  the  appearance  of  the  ghost  to  soldiers  of 
the  watch,  the  play-within-the-play — all  these,  as  well  as 
many  more  minor  conventionalities,  such  as  the  swearing 
on  the  sword-hilt,  or  the  voice  of  the  ghost  in  the  cellar, 
had  appeared  in  other  plays  than  the  old  'Hamlet." 

Here  once  more  we  find  Shakspere  engaged  in  doing 
exactly  what  his  immediate  predecessors  had  done,  but 
doing  it  with  a  difference  which  divides  his  work  from 
theirs  by  an  impassable  gulf.  While  the  other  dramas  in 
which  these  devices  were  utilized  are  now  forgotten,  or  at 
least  known  only  to  devoted  specialists  in  theatrical  his- 
tory, 'Hamlet'  is  alive  to-day  in  the  theater  and  in  the 
library,  as  potent  in  its  appeal  to  the  crowd,  to  the  women 
and  to  thinkers  as  when  it  first  delighted  the  gallants 
seated  on  the  sides  of  the  stage  and  the  groundlings  stand- 
ing in  the  unroofed  yard  of  the  Globe.  What  the  feebler 
playwrights  had  been  vainly  endeavoring  to  accomplish, 
Shakspere  achieved  with  easy  certainty.  He  fused  the 
elements  they  had  provided,  and  out  of  them  he  built  a 
monument  more  enduring  than  bronze.  The  artifices 
they  had  employed,  each  for  its  own  sake,  he  made  ac- 
cessory to  the  portrayal  of  Hamlet  himself.  Even  if  his 
imagination  had  been  fed  by  their  inventions,  he  rose 
without  effort  to  an  originality  all  his  own. 

When  we  consider  'Hamlet'  in  its  relation  to  these  other 
plays,  much  of  the  obscurity  which  many  critics  have 
discovered  in  it  vanishes  at  once.  Professor  Lounsbury 
was  as  wise  as  he  was  witty  when  he  suggested  that  some 
commentators  resemble  fog-horns,  in  that  they  declare  the 
existence  of  the  fog,  but  do  nothing  to  dispel  it;  and  we 


'HAMLET'  209 

might  go  further  and  assert  that  often  the  mist  in  which 
they  find  themselves  enveloped  is  of  their  own  distillation. 
There  is  little  enough  obscurity  in  Hamlet  when  we  see 
him  on  the  stage;  and  there  need  be  no  more  when  we 
consider  him  in  the  study.  Dreamer  as  he  is,  he  has  a 
will  of  his  own;  he  knows  what  he  wants  to  do,  even  if  he 
is  at  times  in  doubt  how  to  do  it.  He  loved  his  father 
profoundly,  and  he  was  naturally  outraged  by  his  mother's 
indecent  haste  in  her  wedding  with  his  uncle.  Then  the 
Ghost  tells  him  that  his  uncle  murdered  his  father.  But 
can  he  believe  the  Ghost?  Is  this  messenger  from  the  other 
world  a  spirit  of  health  or  a  goblin  damned?  Hamlet 
must  be  sure;  and  yet  he  may  not  be  able  always  to  con- 
trol himself  at  will.  So  he  instantly  warns  his  friends  that 
he  may  see  fit  to  put  "an  antic  disposition  on" — that  is,  to 
pretend  insanity,  a  frequent  device  in  other  revenge-plays 
when  the  avenger  needed  time  to  mature  his  vengeance. 
And  it  is  the  senile  Polonius  who  first  declares  that  Ham- 
let is  really  mad,  and  mad  from  love.  That  this  discovery 
is  made  by  an  old  dodderer  is  proof  that  Shakspere  does 
not  mean  us  to  believe  it;  and  here  again  we  are  helped  by 
Moliere,  who  wished  us  to  know  Tartuffe  for  a  villain 
before  we  lay  eyes  on  him,  and  who  therefore  had  Tar- 
tufFe's  hypocrisy  suspected  by  all  the  wise  characters, 
while  his  piety  is  praised  by  all  the  foolish  characters. 

After  the  performance  of  the  play-within-the-play,  at 
which  Claudius  reveals  his  guilt,  Hamlet  is  sure  that  the 
Ghost  has  told  the  truth;  he  knows  that  Claudius  is  guilty; 
but  Claudius  now  suspects  that  he  knows  this.  Hamlet 
is  fixt  in  his  resolve  to  have  his  uncle's  life  in  return  for 
his  father's.  Yet  he  will  not  seize  the  chance  occasion 
and  despatch  the  villain  at  his  prayers,  for  the  murderer 
must  meet  the  fate  of  the  murdered  man  and  die  with  all 


210        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

his  sins  on  him.  Furthermore,  it  will  not  suffice  merely 
to  kill  the  King;  and  some  means  must  be  found  to  expose 
the  guilt  of  Claudius  and  to  make  his  death  not  a  mere 
assassination  but  a  righteous  execution.  Hamlet  does  not 
see  his  way  clear  to  this;  and  he  has  to  bide  his  time, 
implacable  as  is  his  determination.  He  is  able  to  thwart 
the  suspicious  King's  scheme  to  have  him  assassinated  in 
England;  and  then,  before  he  has  decided  how  to  get  out 
of  the  dilemma,  the  fencing  match  with  the  fatal  foils  is 
arranged.  Thereafter  the  action  rushes  on  tumultuously 
to  its  bloody  end. 

It  was  a  saying  of  Amiel's  that  "thought  without 
action  is  an  evil,  and  so  is  action  without  thought. " 
Hamlet  is  a  deep  thinker  who  is  capable  of  prompt  action 
when  once  he  has  decided  what  is  best  to  do.  That  he 
is  always  interesting  on  the  stage  itself  is  proof  positive 
that  he  is  not  weak  of  will,  since  spectators  soon  lose 
interest  in  a  character  who  does  not  know  his  own  mind. 
It  is  true  that  Coleridge  called  Hamlet  brave  and  careless 
of  death,  but  vacillating  from  sensibility  and  procrastinat- 
ing from  thought,  thus  losing  "the  power  of  action  in  the 
energy  of  resolve. "  But  though  Hamlet  has  to  procrasti- 
nate at  times,  he  never  loses  the  power  of  action,  and  even 
his  slight  procrastination  appears  to  be  due  to  the  mesh 
of  dread  circumstance  in  which  he  is  entangled.  Nor  does 
he  vacillate  from  sensibility;  even  if  he  possesses  this,  he  is 
not  possessed  by  it.  He  is  not  unduly  self-conscious,  com- 
prehensible as  that  would  be  in  his  strange  situation.  He 
is  ironic  rather  than  sentimental.  He  may  dally  with  the 
suggestion  of  suicide,  but  he  puts  it  by.  Suicide  would  be 
too  cowardly  a  solution  for  a  brave  man,  careless  of  death. 
That  Hamlet  does  not  slink  out  of  the  duty  laid  upon 
him,  even  if  he  is  compelled  to  postpone  its  execution, 


'  HAMLET'  211 

may  be  taken  as  evidence  that  he  was  not  a  sentimentalist 
at  bottom — or  even  a  cynic,  who  is  often  only  a  senti- 
mentalist turned  sour.  A  sentimentalist  is  never  terrible; 
and  Hamlet  stands  forth  at  last  as  a  towering  tragic  figure. 
He  is  not  a  sentimentalist  and  he  is  not  a  madman. 
His  insanity  is  deliberately  assumed  for  a  definite  pur- 
pose, as  a  cloak  to  enable  him  to  bide  his  time.  His  mad- 
ness has  a  method  in  it,  disclosed  plainly  enough  by  his 
appearance  before  Ophelia,  who  does  not  know  what  to 
make  of  his  abnormal  behavior.  Some  commentators 
have  accepted  his  insanity  as  feigned  at  first  and  as  gen- 
uine toward  the  end.  For  this  view  there  is  little  support 
in  the  play  as  we  have  it.  Hamlet  is  of  a  melancholy 
temperament  and  he  is  strangely  overwrought;  but  he 
keeps  his  senses  and  he  never  forgets  his  purpose,  however 
he  may  veil  it  from  others. 


IV 

'Hamlet'  is  a  most  successful  acting  play,  and  it  is  also 
a  searching  psychological  document;  but  when  he  wrote  it 
Shakspere  had  not  yet  attained  his  full  growth,  and  it  is 
not  difficult  to  discover  evidences  of  his  comparative  im- 
maturity. That  is  to  say,  we  can  find  in  'Hamlet*  inade- 
quacies which  we  fail  to  find  in  certain  of  his  later  plays. 
It  is  a  masterpiece,  no  doubt,  but  it  is  not  without  blem- 
ish. Shakspere  is  writing  a  play  to  please  his  audiences 
and  also  to  express  himself;  and  he  puts  into  it  much  that 
the  mere  playgoers  cannot  perceive  and  that  discloses 
itself  only  to  the  reverent  student.  He  also  puts  into  it 
some  things  that  are  foreign  to  the  action  and  not  strictly 
relevant  to  the  characters.  Shakspere  and  his  fellow- 
actors   resented   the  rivalry  of  the  children's  companies; 


212         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  so  we  have  a  discussion  wholly  out  of  place  in  this 
play,  distending  it  by  sheer  dialogue  devoid  of  immediate 
significance.  Quite  as  needless  is  Hamlet's  protest  against 
the  Danish  habit  of  drinking  deep;  this  subserves  no  useful 
purpose  either  in  emphasizing  the  atmosphere  of  the  action 
or  in  elucidating  the  personality  of  any  of  the  characters. 

It  must  be  noted  also  that  at  least  two  of  the  speeches 
of  Polonius  seem  to  be  extraneous.  The  first  is  the  long 
discourse  of  pregnant  advice  to  his  departing  son,  admi- 
rable in  itself,  and  therefore  likely  to  be  relished  by  Eliza- 
bethan audiences,  but  not  strictly  in  keeping  with  the 
senile  garrulity  of  Polonius  himself.  And  the  other  is  the 
wholly  superfluous  episode  in  which  Polonius  instructs 
Reynaldo  how  to  make  inquiry  in  Paris  as  to  the  behavior 
of  Laertes.  Here  again  Polonius  shows  a  shrewdness  of 
speech  not  exhibited  by  him  in  the  other  scenes  in  which 
he  is  more  intimately  related  to  the  action  of  the  play. 

More  noteworthy  than  these  excrescences  is  what  can 
only  be  called  callousness.  Hamlet's  dealing  with  the 
body  of  Polonius  is  indefensible;  it  is  frankly  unfeeling; 
it  is  wholly  unworthy  of  the  gentle  prince  as  we  see  him 
in  other  moods.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  defend  his  attitude 
toward  Ophelia  and  his  unkind  disregard  of  the  suffering 
he  needlessly  inflicts  upon  her.  Still  less  explicable  is  the 
treatment  of  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern.  They  have 
spied  upon  him,  it  is  true,  and  they  are  bearers  of  a  sealed 
missive  which  is  to  be  his  sentence  of  death.  But  they 
are  not  accessories  before  the  fact;  they  are  only  obeying 
Claudius  in  all  innocence.  Yet  Hamlet  substitutes  for 
their  letter  of  instructions  one  of  his  own  in  which  he 
sends  them  to  certain  death.  This  is  wanton  murder;  it 
is  unnecessary  to  his  purpose  or  for  his  own  protection, 
and  it  is  quite  foreign  to  his  character  as  a  whole. 


'HAMLET'  213 

In  like  manner  Laertes,  who  is  presented  as  a  manly 
young  fellow  with  no  paraded  vices,  falls  in  at  once  with 
the  proposal  of  Claudius  to  assassinate  Hamlet  with  an  un- 
buttoned foil;  and  he  even  volunteers  immediately  to  per- 
form a  more  dastardly  trick  of  his  own — to  put  poison  on 
the  blade.  It  might  be  possible  to  defend  this  as  the  swift 
condensation  of  stage  necessity  when  the  final  act  of  a 
play  is  rushing  precipitately  to  its  culmination;  but  it  is 
more  likely  to  be  only  an  example  of  the  summary  psy- 
chology common  enough  in  Kyd  before  Shakspere  and  in 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  after  him.  The  Elizabethan 
playgoers  delighted  in  frequent  transformations  of  charac- 
ter, however  contradictory  these  might  be  in  themselves. 

No  doubt  these  blemishes  are  but  trifles,  after  all,  which 
the  spectator  does  not  notice  and  which  do  not  arrest 
for  long  the  attention  of  the  reader.  The  play  is  what  it 
is,  in  spite  of  the  flaws  which  may  be  picked  in  it.  More 
than  one  of  the  minor  characters  is  only  brushed  in,  a  mere 
figure  in  profile,  lacking  the  rotundity  of  real  life.  Incon- 
sistencies there  are  even  in  the  conduct  of  the  plot;  and 
there  are  episodes  which  stand  in  need  of  explanation. 
The  most  natural  method  of  accounting  for  these  sins  of 
omission  and  commission  is  to  assume  that  Shakspere 
begins  by  taking  the  old  play  and  by  refashioning  it  here 
and  there — perhaps  doing  no  more  at  first  than  the  rewrit- 
ing of  certain  speeches  and  the  remaking  of  scenes.  Then, 
in  time,  as  he  becomes  more  interested  in  the  personality 
of  Hamlet,  he  recasts  that  character  and  modifies  the 
conduct  of  the  action  to  conform  to  his  subtler  concep- 
tion of  its  hero.  Going  at  it  piecemeal,  he  may  never 
have  completed  it  to  his  own  satisfaction.  At  least,  we 
cannot  be  assured  that  we  have  his  final  text  as  he  would 
have  wished  us  to  have  it — if  he  could  have  foreseen  that 


2i4        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

we  should  care  for  it  three  centuries  after  Burbage  had 
used  it  to  fill  the  Globe  time  after  time.  What  we  need 
always  to  remember  is  that  Shakspere  is  embroidering 
his  new  pattern  on  an  old  canvas;  and  we  have  no  reason 
to  be  puzzled  if  we  catch  a  glimpse  now  and  again  of 
the  worn  stuff  under  the  fresh  work. 


V 

Shakspere  is  never  a  theorist  of  the  drama,  but  always 
a  practical  playwright,  accepting  the  conditions  of  the 
theater  as  he  found  it,  with  no  desire  to  innovate.  He 
always  declines  to  put  on  the  gyves  of  "poetic  justice"  as 
that  doctrine  has  been  narrowly  defined,  just  as  he  also 
refuses  to  enter  the  triple-barred  cage  of  the  so-called 
unities  of  Action,  of  Time  and  of  Place.  His  tragic  heroes 
do  not  survive  their  vain  struggle  against  forces  which 
they  cannot  overcome;  and  when  they  finally  pull  down 
the  twin  pillars  of  the  temple,  they  are  crushed  in  the  ruin 
they  have  wrought.  Yet  at  the  end  of  Shakspere's  greater 
tragedies  there  is  reconciliation  and  peace.  Though  the 
individual  has  perished,  the  state  survives;  and  it  is  left 
in  a  sounder  condition  than  before  the  action  began. 
Hamlet  and  Laertes,  the  King  and  the  Queen,  may  lie  dead 
before  our  eyes;  but  there,  standing  in  sight,  is  the  stal- 
wart figure  of  young  Fortinbras  ready  to  take  up  the  reins 
of  government.  So  Romeo  and  Juliet  had  died  untimely 
in  the  tomb;  but  their  deaths  had  brought  about  the 
cessation  of  the  fatal  feud  and  bestowed  upon  Verona  the 
boon  of  an  unhoped-for  cessation  of  strife.  Shakspere  is 
too  large  a  genius  and  he  has  too  searching  an  insight  ever 
to  falsify  his  report  by  pretending  that  his  ill-starred 
heroes  need  not  pay  the  penalty  imposed  on  them. 


'HAMLET  215 

He  could  rest  his  fame  as  a  psychologist  upon  the  single 
character  of  Hamlet.  Other  characters  in  other  and  later 
plays  attest  the  wide  range  of  his  knowledge  of  mankind, 
but  none  of  them  better  than  Hamlet  discloses  the  depth 
of  his  penetration.  In  no  one  of  his  plays  does  Shakspere 
probe  the  recesses  of  the  soul  with  a  subtler  certainty  than 
in  this;  and  yet  the  atmosphere  of  the  play  is  healthy 
and  not  pathologic.  Hamlet  himself  is  not  morbid,  even 
though  he  may  be  sadly  sick  at  heart;  and  he  is  not 
abnormal,  even  though  he  is  sternly  forced  out  of  the 
regular  current  of  daily  life.  He  stands  before  us  a  man, 
such  as  we  are;  of  a  finer  grain,  no  doubt,  and  of  a  more 
exquisite  sensibility,  but  one  of  us,  after  all — a  man,  and 
not  a  monster,  a  man  to  whom  we  are  drawn  irresistibly 
because  of  his  full  share  of  our  common  humanity,  a  man 
with  whom  we  can  sympathize  and  in  whom  we  can  see 
ourselves. 

As  'Hamlet'  is  evidence  of  Shakspere's  right  to  be 
reckoned  with  as  a  psychologist,  so  it  also  justifies  his 
title  to  be  considered  as  a  philosopher.  The  play  as  a 
whole  is  informed  and  sustained  by  a  sound  understand- 
ing of  the  complexities  of  existence,  an  understanding 
possible  only  to  a  poet  with  a  large  apprehension  of  life. 
The  philosophy  of  Shakspere  underlies  the  action  from 
beginning  to  end;  it  endows  this  action  with  large  signifi- 
cance; and  it  gives  the  play  sincerity,  sanity  and  integrity. 
The  drama  is  swathed  in  philosophy,  and  the  character  of 
Hamlet  is  that  of  a  man  prone  to  philosophize.  The 
strange  situations  in  which  the  young  prince  is  suddenly 
involved  tempt  him  to  frequent  disquisition.  His  atten- 
tion is  keenly  aroused  by  certain  of  the  problems  of  life; 
and  his  alert  curiosity  makes  him  turn  them  over  in  his 
mind. 


216         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Of  course,  Shakspere  discussing  these  questions,  through 
the  mouth  of  Hamlet,  does  not  pretend  to  proffer  any 
solution  or  even  to  push  the  investigation  further  than  it 
had  been  carried  earlier.  It  is  the  privilege  of  the  dra- 
matic poet  to  put  problems  before  us,  but  it  is  never  his 
duty  to  solve  them.  He  is  not  required  to  be  ready  with 
an  answer  to  any  of  the  riddles  of  the  universe,  however 
much  these  may  perplex  his  several  characters.  His  duty 
is  to  set  his  characters  before  us,  making  each  of  them 
obey  the  law  of  its  own  being  and  express  the  thoughts 
awakened  by  the  situation.  It  need  surprise  no  one 
that  there  is  little  originality  in  Hamlet's  musings  over 
the  lure  of  self-slaughter,  for  instance.  Shakspere  is  not 
making  a  contribution  to  mental  science;  and  what  Ham- 
let says  must  have  been  said  by  scores  of  fellow-sufferers 
in  the  centuries  before  Shakspere  was  born.  There  is  no 
more  novelty  in  the  "To  be  or  not  to  be"  soliloquy  than 
there  is  in  the  "Call  no  man  happy  till  he  be  dead"  at 
the  end  of  'CEdipus  the  King.' 

Shakspere  is  like  Sophocles  in  that  he  was  not  an  orig- 
inal thinker,  in  the  narrow  sense  of  the  term.  Dramatic 
poets  are  not  called  upon  to  push  forward  the  boundaries 
of  intellectual  speculation.  Playwrights  must  ever  ap- 
peal to  the  people  as  a  whole,  and  therefore  they  cannot 
adventure  themselves  too  far  in  advance  of  the  majority. 
The  maker  of  plays  can  be  an  original  thinker  only  in  the 
broader  sense  that  his  thoughts  are  his  own  even  if  they 
may  have  been  slaves  to  thousands.  However  worn  and 
aged  these  thoughts  may  be  in  themselves,  they  are  fresh 
and  young  to  him,  for  they  have  been  born  to  him  anew 
out  of  his  own  travail.  The  poet  can  take  the  old  coins, 
smoothed  with  the  years,  and  issue  them  from  his  mint 
unsullied  by  earlier  contacts.     The  eternal  verities  are  all 


'HAMLET'  217 

essential  commonplaces  which  the  poets  of  every  genera- 
tion are  free  to  voice  again  in  imperishable  phrase.  The 
dramatic  poet,  more  particularly,  can  make  old  truths 
new  by  the  sheer  sincerity  of  his  own  belief  in  them. 
Thus  he  brings  them  home  to  the  spectator,  compelled 
for  once  to  take  cognizance  of  them  in  the  theater,  even 
if  he  might  have  made  acquaintance  with  them  earlier 
elsewhere. 

Thus  it  is  the  poet  who  is  the  constant  collaborator  of 
the  philosopher.  Poet  as  he  is,  Shakspere  is  ever  the 
theater-poet  (to  use  Goethe's  term).  His  lines  are  at- 
tuned to  the  rhythm  of  the  spoken  word.  They  have  the 
flowing  amplitude  which  the  actor  needs  and  desires;  they 
are  fitted  for  oral  delivery;  and  they  fall  trippingly  on  the 
ear.  In  ' Hamlet'  rime  is  eschewed  almost  altogether  (re- 
curring only  in  an  occasional  exit-speech),  perhaps  be- 
cause the  play  has  little  of  that  purely  lyric  emotion 
which  almost  cries  aloud  for  the  echoes  of  the  couplet. 
So,  also,  there  are  few  of  the  merely  verbal  conceits  com- 
mon enough  in  the  plays  of  his  'prentice  period  when 
he  had  not  yet  discovered  how  much  he  had  to  say.  The 
lines  are  no  longer  prevailingly  end-stopped,  although  the 
verse  is  still  cautiously  wrought.  It  is  at  once  fluid  and 
sonorous,  grateful  to  the  actor  and  effective  upon  the 
hearer.  Yet  it  does  not  quite  attain  the  large  freedom 
which  Shakspere  was  soon  to  achieve  in  'Othello'  and 
'Macbeth.' 

Already  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  had  he  exemplified  his 
possession  of  "that  intense  fire,"  as  Professor  Lounsbury 
has  called  it,  "that  passion  which  fuses  thought  and  feel- 
ing into  felicity  of  expression,  which  is  the  envy  and  de- 
spair of  the  imitator."  His  style  is  less  conscious  than 
Vergil's  or  Milton's  or  even  Dante's;  it  is  less  deliberate. 


218         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

We  rarely  feel  tempted  to  wonder  whether  he  did  not  roll 
the  phrase  on  his  tongue  from  an  almost  sensual  delight 
in  the  dexterity  of  his  art.  In  his  noblest  passages  there 
is  an  affluence  and  a  freedom  seemingly  as  unpremedi- 
tated as  in  Homer's  undecorated  lines.  And  beautiful  as 
his  best  speeches  are  in  the  study,  it  is  only  on  the  stage 
that  they  achieve  their  full  effect. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  COMEDY-DRAMAS 


Shakspere  was  in  no  sense  precocious,  fortunately  for 
him;  as  Margaret  Fuller  once  said,  "for  precocity  some 
great  price  is  always  demanded  sooner  or  later  in  life." 
He  had  begun  modestly  by  revising  and  by  imitating;  and 
only  as  he  advanced  in  technical  dexterity  had  he  clearly 
discerned  where  his  real  strength  lay.  He  had  come  to 
the  drama  when  it  was  in  a  period  of  marvelous  expansion 
and  when  it  had  not  arrived  at  any  general  recognition 
either  of  its  possibilities  or  of  the  best  method  for  their 
attainment. 

It  was  a  little  unlucky  for  Shakspere  himself — and  it 
was  very  unlucky  for  the  dramatists  who  had  to  follow 
him — that  he  arrived  upon  the  scene  before  definite  types 
of  tragedy  and  of  comedy  had  been  established.  There  is 
advantage  for  every  author  in  finding  a  fit  formula  ready 
to  his  hand,  since  he  is  then  free  to  express  himself  as  best 
he  can  in  accord  with  a  pattern  which  has  already  won 
acceptance.  Sophocles,  for  example,  took  over  the  frame- 
work of  iEschylus  as  Racine  accepted  that  of  Corneille; 
they  both  modified  the  tradition  they  derived  from  these 
immediate  predecessors,  but  by  it  they  were  relieved 
from  tentative  vagueness  of  effort.  Shakspere  was  not 
aided  by  any  satisfactory  tradition  which  he  could  receive 
unhesitatingly.     He  had  to  blaze  his  own  trail;  and  it  is  no 

wonder  that  he  sometimes  wandered  in  a  circle.     As  Hux- 

219 


220        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

ley  says,  it  is  when  a  man  can  do  as  he  pleases  that  his 
troubles  begin.  In  many  of  Shakspere's  earlier  plays  we 
can  discover  evidences  of  his  groping  darkly  for  a  pattern 
fitted  for  his  immediate  purpose. 

Yet  he  had  already  finished  his  apprenticeship.  A  poet 
he  was  by  the  gift  of  God;  a  psychologist  he  became  by 
observation  and  by  intuition;  a  philosopher  he  had  risen 
to  be  as  the  result  of  insight  and  of  meditation;  and  a  play- 
wright he  had  made  himself  by  hard  work,  by  the  absorp- 
tion of  every  available  trick  of  the  trade  which  his  pred- 
ecessors and  contemporaries  had  devised,  and  also  by 
constant  and  adroit  experimenting  of  his  own.  He  had 
proved  his  mastery  by  tragedies  as  different  as  'Romeo 
and  Juliet'  and  'Hamlet.'  It  is  strange,  therefore,  that 
he  should  ever  have  written  three  plays  as  comparatively 
empty  of  dramatic  power  as  'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,' 
'Measure  for  Measure'  and  'Troilus  and  Cressida.'  It  is 
still  stranger  that  he  should  have  written  these  plays  at 
this  period  of  his  development  as  a  dramatist.  They  con- 
tain single  scenes  that  only  Shakspere  could  have  handled 
and  occasional  passages  that  only  he  could  have  phrased; 
but  none  the  less  are  they  among  his  poorest  productions. 
And  the  critic  who  does  not  feel  keenly  the  inferiority  of 
these  three  pieces  is  disqualified  for  a  full  appreciation 
of  the  immense  superiority  of  'Hamlet'  and  'Romeo  and 
Juliet,'  of  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  and  'As  you  Like  it.' 

In  considering  no  other  group  of  his  pieces  is  the  lack 
of  an  ascertained  chronology  more  annoying  than  in  deal- 
ing with  these  somber  plays,  two  of  them  comedy-dramas 
and  the  third  a  bitter  and  ribald  satire  devoid  of  the 
gaiety  of  true  comedy.  All  the  evidence  tends  to  prove 
that  these  three  pieces  were  composed  in  the  same  brief 
space  of  years  in  which  he  was  also  composing  'Julius 


THE  COMEDY-DRAMAS  221 

Caesar'  and  'Hamlet/  'Othello'  and  'Macbeth.'  Now 
these  are  well-made  plays  on  worthy  themes,  and  they 
certify  to  Shakspere's  attainment  of  a  high  degree  of 
technical  dexterity.  Why  then  should  he  have  at  this 
time  written  three  pieces,  'All's  Well,'  'Measure  for 
Measure'  and  'Troilus  and  Cressida,'  ill  made  on  unwor- 
thy themes,  carelessly  thrown  together  and  repugnant  in 
temper? 

The  current  explanation  is  that  these  were  hurried 
work,  thrown  off  hastily  while  his  mind  was  focused  on 
the  more  important  and  more  interesting  plays  which  he 
was  producing  in  the  same  period.  That  Shakspere  often 
worked  under  pressure  is  very  likely,  since  he  had  a  hand 
in  nearly  forty  pieces  in  about  twenty  years,  from  1 591 
to  161 1,  from  his  twenty-seventh  year  to  his  forty-seventh. 
This  averages  about  two  plays  a  year;  and  haste  might 
account,  more  or  less,  for  the  slovenliness  of  the  plot- 
making  in  these  three  pieces,  since  structural  symmetry 
can  be  achieved  only  by  taking  thought. 

But  haste  alone  is  an  inadequate  explanation  for  the 
artistic  lapses  of  these  plays.  It  does  not  supply  any 
justification  for  the  themes  themselves  or  for  the  harsh 
tone  which  characterizes  them.  It  does  not  account  for 
the  almost  wilful  violation  of  those  dominating  principles 
of  the  drama  which  ought  to  have  become  almost  second 
nature  to  Shakspere  at  this  time  and  by  which  he  was 
being  guided  in  the  composition  of 'Hamlet'  and  'Othello.' 
And  yet  haste  on  the  one  side  and  on  the  other  his  absorp- 
tion in  more  interesting  work  are  the  only  excuses  that 
have  been  urged  for  the  reckless  composition  of  these 
plays,  while  their  unlovely  atmosphere  has  been  credited, 
more  or  less  fancifully,  to  some  personal  experience  of  his 
own  at  about  that  time.     This  last  suggestion  may  have  a 


222         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

certain  weight,  although  it  is  not  borne  out  by  the  facts 
of  literary  biography,  which  tend  to  show  that  many  of 
the  most  humorous  books  have  flowered  out  of  their 
authors'  melancholy  in  periods  of  depression.  Perhaps 
there  is  more  validity  in  the  explanation  which  calls  at- 
tention to  the  popularity  of  what  may  be  termed  sex- 
problem  plays  by  Middleton  and  Marston  in  the  half 
dozen  years  after  1600,  the  very  period  when  Shakspere, 
always  keenly  responsive  to  the  influence  of  the  contem- 
porary theater,  was  composing  these  comedy-dramas. 
Whatever  the  reason  may  be,  the  fact  remains  that  Shak- 
spere did  descend  to  the  writing  of  these  three  dramat- 
ically inferior  pieces  in  the  same  years  that  he  was  com- 
posing his  noblest  plays. 

II 

'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well'  is  the  feeblest  of  the  lot, 
dramaturgically  and  psychologically.  Of  all  the  plays 
which  are  indisputably  Shakspere's  own,  it  is  the  weakest. 
The  story  is  offensive;  the  plotting  is  casual;  the  character- 
drawing  is  unconvincing  and  inconsistent;  and  the  humor 
is  inexpensive.  The  method  throughout  is  immature,  as 
if  in  sympathy  with  the  puerility  of  the  subject.  The 
story  which  he  borrowed  from  Boccaccio  is  absurd  and 
unpleasant.  At  bottom  it  may  not  be  more  medieval 
than  that  of  the  'Merchant  of  Venice,'  but  it  is  less  ca- 
pable of  effective  dramatic  development.  And  while  the 
story  of  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  may  be  impossible 
when  tested  by  the  facts  of  life,  it  is  sweet  and  pleasant, 
whereas  the  story  of  'All's  Well,'  perhaps  not  absolutely 
impossible  in  itself,  is  odious  and  offensive.  The  story  of 
the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  Shakspere  builds  up  into  a  com- 


THE   COMEDY-DRAMAS  223 

pact  plot,  rising  scene  by  scene  to  its  climax  and  declin- 
ing at  last  in  a  lovely  vision  of  young  love  delight- 
ing in  its  triumph;  but  the  story  of  'All's  Well'  he  leaves 
a  straggling  sequence  of  episodes  of  mere  narrative  baldly 
presented  in  dialogue.  Probably  the  theme  could  not 
have  been  made  dramatically  attractive;  and  certainly 
Shakspere  does  not  make  it  either  attractive  or  dramatic. 

Apparently  it  was  Shakspere's  ingrained  belief  (founded 
it  may  be  on  his  own  experience)  that  woman  is  not  only 
willing  to  meet  her  wooer  half-way,  as  Juliet  and  Rosalind 
do,  but  often  to  make  advances,  as  Olivia  and  Phoebe 
and  Desdemona  do — and  also  the  Venus  of  'Venus  and 
Adonis.'  This  belief  is  pushed  to  its  uttermost  extreme 
in  'All's  Well,'  where  we  see  Helena  forcing  the  unwilling 
Bertram  into  a  distasteful  marriage  and  then  winning  him 
by  the  most  despicable  of  tricks,  a  device  as  indelicate  as 
it  is  crude.  That  the  heroine  is  capable  of  descending  to 
such  a  low  contrivance,  with  all  that  it  implies,  robs  her 
at  once  of  any  claim  to  sympathy.  And  in  the  desire  to 
force  the  contrast  between  her  and  the  man  she  takes 
captive,  Shakspere  persistently  blackens  him  and  makes 
him  so  contemptible  a  creature  that  she  degrades  herself 
in  our  eyes  almost  as  much  by  the  mere  fact  that  she 
pursues  such  a  cad  as  by  the  abhorrent  contrivance  which 
makes  him  hers  at  last.  We  do  not  even  pity  her  in  her 
success;  rather  do  we  despise  them  both. 

The  situation  in  which  the  original  tale  forces  her  to 
place  herself  is,  as  Andrew  Lang  put  it  sharply,  "at  once 
hideous  and  wholly  out  of  keeping  with  Helena's  character 
as  it  appears  in  her  conversations"  with  Bertram's  mother. 
But  it  is  not  out  of  keeping  with  her  earlier  conversation 
with  Parolles  in  which  she  bandies  words  about  her 
own  virginity — a  conversation  reeking  with  vulgarity  and 


224         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

quite  impossible  to  a  modest-minded  girl,  however  frank 
and  plain-spoken  she  might  be.  Almost  as  degrading  are 
the  speeches  in  which  she  challenges  one  lord  after  another 
to  marry  her  before  she  unexpectedly  claims  the  unsus- 
pecting Bertram,  a  scene  needless  in  itself,  and  needlessly 
gross,  made  worse  by  the  vulgar  comments  of  La  Feu. 
Henry  James  once  asserted  that  George  Sand  had  no 
taste  morally;  only  very  rarely  could  a  similar  accusation 
be  brought  against  Shakspere;  but  here,  in  these  two 
scenes,  is  evidence  that  he  was  not  unwilling  to  descend 
to  tickle  the  groundlings  of  the  Globe  with  the  quibbling 
indecency  they  avidly  relished.  Shakspere's  great  plays 
are  for  all  time;  but  ' All's  Well*  and  its  fellows  are  only 
for  Tudor  days. 

Shakspere  has  padded  out  the  main  narrative  with  irrel- 
evant humor.  The  theme  itself  did  not  suggest  or  call 
for  comic  characters;  and  these  which  Shakspere  has  in- 
serted remain  extraneous  to  the  central  story.  He  returns 
to  the  "  clown, "  that  is,  to  the  low  comedian  sent  on  the 
stage  at  intervals  merely  to  be  funny  without  the  aid  of  an 
assumed  character.  In  ' All's  Well'  this  low-comedy  part 
is  actually  nameless;  in  the  First  Folio  he  is  frankly  desig- 
nated as  the  "clown."  This  clown  has  conversations  with 
the  Countess  and  with  La  Feu  empty  of  significance  but 
bristling  with  verbal  quibbles  and  often  with  obscene  innu- 
endo. These  dialogues  are  lacking  in  any  flavor  of  char- 
acter; they  are  on  the  level  of  the  "sidewalk  conversa- 
tions" of  our  modern  variety-shows.  Andrew  Lang  was 
not  overstating  the  case  when  he  calls  the  frivolities  of  the 
clown  "coarse  and  stupid,  even  beyond  the  ordinary 
stupidity  of  Elizabethan  horse-play." 

Although  the  clown  is  the  least  comic  of  all  alleged 
comic  characters,  the  other  figures  supposed  to  be  amus- 


THE   COMEDY-DRAMAS  225 

ing  are  only  a  little  more  truthful.  The  old  lord,  La  Feu 
(intended  obviously  for  the  actor  who  had  played  Polonius 
and  who  was  to  play  Pandarus),  is  a  traditional  type,  fre- 
quent in  other  Elizabethan  pieces  and  not  here  sharply 
individualized.  The  cowardly  soldier,  Parolles  (designed 
probably  for  the  performer  of  Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek),  is 
only  a  variant  of  the  braggart,  which  English  comedy  had 
taken  over  from  the  Greek  and  the  Latin,  the  Italian  and 
the  French.  He  is  a  diminished  replica  of  Falstaff  done 
without  gusto  or  unction.  The  episodes  in  which  he  ap- 
pears lack  spontaneity;  they  suggest  fatigue  of  invention; 
and  such  humor  as  they  have  is  largely  mechanical  and 
often  perfunctory.  The  protracted  scene  in  which  Parolles 
is  convicted  of  cowardice  has  flashes  of  fun  now  and  again, 
but  it  is  only  an  example  of  that  most  primitive  form  of 
humor,  the  practical  joke. 

Deficient  as  ' All's  Well'  is  in  dramatic  vigor  and  in 
psychologic  veracity,  it  is  deficient  also  in  poetry.  Pas- 
sages there  are  in  which  we  find  the  true  Shaksperian  fire; 
but  there  are  only  a  few  of  them.  Even  in  style,  which 
rarely  forsakes  Shakspere,  we  find  a  sad  falling-off.  There 
are  long  speeches  and  dialogues  in  rime,  stuffed  with 
classical  allusions,  even  when  the  situation  cries  aloud  for 
the  large  simplicity  of  blank  verse.  Helena's  letter  is  in 
sonnet  form;  and  her  final  soliloquy  is  in  rime,  as  though 
the  arbitrariness  of  the  theme  compelled  artificiality  of 
treatment.  There  is  an  unreality  of  thought  and  a  stiff 
mannerism  of  expression  far  removed  from  the  noble 
felicity  of  the  speeches  in  'Hamlet.'  In  fact,  if  we  knew 
Shakspere  only  as  the  author  of  'All's  Well'  we  should 
rank  him  with  the  outer  throng  of  his  contemporaries,  and 
not  higher  than  the  average  of  those  whose  works  have 
survived. 


226         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

It  may  be  that  when  he  composed  'All's  Well'  he  was 
worn  and  weary,  distracted  by  some  personal  suffering 
we  can  only  guess  at.  Yet  it  needs  to  be  said  once  more 
that  his  effort  seems  always  to  be  in  direct  proportion  to 
the  attraction  exerted  upon  him  by  the  subject  he  is  at 
work  on.  When  his  theme  is  inspiring  he  puts  forth  all 
his  power,  and  stands  revealed  as  the  accomplished  play- 
wright and  the  incomparable  poet.  But  he  is  often  casual 
in  the  selection  of  his  subject,  taking  whatever  trifling 
tale  chances  to  be  nearest  to  his  hand  and  descending  to 
stories  wholly  unworthy  of  his  genius.  Then  his  ambition 
is  not  roused  and  his  endeavor  is  relaxed;  he  moves  along 
the  line  of  least  resistance,  and  he  is  concerned  chiefly  to 
supply  the  groundlings  with  what  they  will  enjoy. 


Ill 

Fortunately  for  us,  it  was  not  often  that  he  let  himself 
sink  to  this  low  level;  and  ' Measure  for  Measure,'  open  as 
it  is  to  much  of  the  same  adverse  criticism  which  has  been 
here  bestowed  upon  'All's  Well,'  is  distinctly  a  better 
piece  of  work.  Its  theme  is  repugnant,  but  it  is  not  unin- 
teresting. The  most  conscientious  of  playwrights  could 
not  make  a  really  good  play  on  the  subject  of  'All's  Well,' 
whereas  it  is  possible  that  the  subject  of  'Measure  for 
Measure'  might  be  worked  up  into  a  fairly  coherent  plot, 
even  if  Shakspere  himself  fails  to  do  this.  Even  as  he 
treats  the  theme  there  are  at  least  three  scenes  of  genuine 
dramatic  value,  which  he  handles  with  secure  mastery. 
These  are,  first,  the  discovery  by  Angelo  that  he  lusts  after 
Isabella;  then  the  scene  in  which  he  proposes  his  evil  bar- 
gain to  her;  and  finally  the  scene  in  which  she  tells  her 
brother  of  the  fearful  price  she  would  have  to  pay  for  his 


THE  COMEDY-DRAMAS  227 

life,  and  in  which  Claudio's  courage  deliquesces  in  the 
imminent  fear  of  death.  These  episodes  are  rendered  with 
Shakspere's  customary  power;  they  are  rich  in  poetry  and 
in  psychology;  they  grip  the  interest  of  the  spectator  with 
unfailing  authority.  But  the  story  as  a  whole  is  haphaz- 
ard in  its  movement;  it  again  is  only  a  narrative  cut  into 
dialogues,  and  not  compactly  built  up  into  a  logical  struc- 
ture, rising  scene  by  scene  to  its  climax.  Shakspere's 
method  is  here  no  better  than  that  of  the  writers  of  the 
chronicle-plays  who  held  the  stage  when  he  first  came  up 
to  London;  and  this  method  called  for  the  inclusion  of 
needless  episodes  of  mere  buffoonery.  The  play  is  as 
medieval  in  manner  as  it  is  in  substance. 

The  theme  is  not  so  obnoxious  as  that  of  'All's  Well,' 
and  it  has  dramatic  possibilities,  even  if  Shakspere  neg- 
lected to  make  the  most  of  them.  It  demands  that  noctur- 
nal substitution  of  one  woman  for  another,  which  Shak- 
spere had  already  used  in  'All's  Well/  and  which  the  elder 
Dumas  was  to  employ  in  'Mile,  de  Belle-Isle.'  This 
unseemly  device  is  not  quite  so  forced  in  'Measure  for 
Measure'  as  it  is  in  'All's  Well,'  since  the  volunteering  of 
Mariana  of  the  later  play  may  have  a  justification  wholly 
lacking  to  the  Diana  of  the  earlier  play.  But  the  artifice 
itself  is  unlovely,  and  it  cannot  be  made  acceptable.  In 
employing  it  Shakspere  is  invading  the  territory  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  to  whom  it  seems  more  naturally  to 
belong. 

There  may  be  much  of  the  same  make-believe  in  the 
'Merchant  of  Venice,'  but  there  at  least  the  characters 
are  alive;  Shylock  rings  true,  Portia  and  Jessica  and 
Nerissa  are  human  and  womanly  and  feminine,  whereas  in 
'Measure  for  Measure'  all  the  characters  are  more  or  less 
wooden.     Even  Isabella  is  open  to  this  criticism  at  times; 


228         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

her  appeal  to  the  Duke  in  the  last  act  is  eloquent,  but  not 
heartfelt;  it  is  essentially  rhetorical  at  a  moment  when 
rhetoric  is  out  of  place.  The  rest  of  the  persons  in  the 
piece  are  little  better  than  puppets.  Claudio  is  the  best 
of  them,  although  he  is  only  sketched  in.  Angelo  admits 
that  he  is  a  sensualist,  but  he  displays  rather  the  chilly 
viciousness  of  the  stage-villain  than  the  hot  ardor  of  a 
truly  passionate  nature.  The  Duke  is  absurd  in  his 
solemn  disguises,  put  on  and  put  off,  for  purely  theatrical 
effect.  The  scenes  which  follow  the  Duke's  return  are 
merely  plot  for  the  sake  of  plot  itself;  they  evince  a 
Scribe-like  complexity  without  Scribe's  ingenuity.  Mr. 
A.  B.  Walkley  was  uttering  the  opinion  of  every  honest 
critic  when  he  declared  that  "we  do  not  like  these  peo- 
ple, and  we  do  not  like  many  of  the  sentiments  by  which 
they  are  governed." 

The  comic  characters  are  not  quite  so  dreary  as  those  in 
'All's  Well.'  Lucio  (obviously  composed  for  the  actor 
who  had  played  Mercutio  and  Gratiano)  has  a  flippant 
briskness  which  is  at  least  less  wearisome  than  the  dull 
fooling  of  the  clown.  Mrs.  Overdone  (obviously  imper- 
sonated by  the  performer  of  Mrs.  Quickly  and  of  the  Nurse 
in  'Romeo  and  Juliet')  is  set  before  us  with  full  apprecia- 
tion of  her  type.  Escalus  (possibly  undertaken  by  Shak- 
spere  himself)  has  a  dignified  simplicity.  Elbow  is  plainly 
a  replica  of  Dogberry  (and  was  certainly  intended  for  the 
same  actor,  probably  Armin).  But  Elbow  lacks  the  spon- 
taneity of  Dogberry;  his  garrulity  is  tedious,  and  he  has 
the  ineffectiveness  which  is  likely  to  be  the  result  of  any 
mechanical  attempt  to  repeat  an  earlier  hit.  As  a  group 
the  avowedly  comic  characters  contribute  very  little  to 
the  gaiety  of  nations. 

Whatever  appeal  the  play  may  have  is  due  wholly  to 


THE   COMEDY-DRAMAS  229 

Isabella;  and  she  is  not  quite  equal  to  the  burden  laid  on 
her  shoulders.  She  does  not  rise  to  the  possible  heights 
of  the  situation;  she  is  a  little  deficient  both  in  feeling 
and  in  intelligence.  That,  resolved  as  she  was  to  enter  a 
nunnery,  she  should  pair  off  with  the  Duke  at  the  end  of 
the  play,  so  that  the  so-called  comedy  may  end  with  three 
weddings,  leaves  her  in  our  memory  as  a  figure  sadly 
diminished  from  the  heroic.  The  Duke  has  not  wooed 
her,  and  apparently  he  has  never  given  her  a  thought  as  a 
possible  consort.  She  has  shown  no  liking  for  him;  and 
yet  she  accepts  him  offhand,  practically  selling  herself  for 
rank,  although  she  had  refused  to  sell  herself  to  save  her 
brother's  life.  This  is  all  of  a  piece  with  the  huddled  con- 
fusion of  the  final  act  and  with  the  topsyturvy  morality 
which  underlies  its  conclusion.  Even  the  villain  Angelo 
is  spared  and  dismissed  to  matrimony — a  matrimony 
which  has  slight  promise  of  bliss  for  the  injured  Mariana; 
but  as  Mariana  also  is  devoid  of  interest,  this  matters 
little. 

The  play  has  many  fine  lines — passages  such  as  only 
Shakspere  could  pen.  It  contains  certain  of  his  most  sig- 
nificant ethical  judgments  on  sin  and  mercy  and  death. 
But  it  is  as  painful  as  it  is  ill-shapen;  and  at  the  core  of 
it  is  a  distasteful  device.  What  lingers  in  the  memory 
after  its  performance  is  the  figure  of  Isabella,  nobly  con- 
ceived, even  if  inconsistently  presented.  And  it  is  due 
solely  to  the  histrionic  opportunities  of  the  part  of  Isa- 
bella that  the  piece  is  still  seen  at  rare  intervals  on  the 
stage,  from  which  'All's  Well'  and  'Troilus  and  Cressida' 
have  long  been  banished.  Even  when  it  now  emerges  be- 
fore the  footlights  its  stay  is  but  brief,  for  it  gives  the 
playgoer  neither  the  purging  pleasure  of  true  tragedy 
nor  the  sparkling  joy  of  genuine  comedy.     "  It  is  a  comedy 


230         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

where  Death  holds  the  place  of  hove,"  so  Andrew  Lang 
declared;  "there  is  no  beautiful  shape  of  Love  in  the 
whole  of  it,  and  the  very  mirth  is  miserable.', 


IV 

If  it  is  difficult  to  explain  why  Shakspere  happened  to 
write  these  two  tragi-comedies,  it  is  impossible  to  un- 
derstand his  reason  for  writing  the  third.  'Troilus  and 
Cressida'  is  frankly  the  most  obscure  and  the  most  baf- 
fling of  all  his  pieces.  His  purpose  in  composing  it  is 
inexplicable;  and  we  cannot  even  declare  with  certainty 
whether  he  meant  to  make  it  tragic  or  comic.  It  has  no 
central  theme;  and  the  three  strands  of  story  which  are 
intertwined  are  left  at  loose  ends.  It  is  entitled  'Troilus 
and  Cressida,'  and  yet  Cressida  appears  only  four  times 
in  all:  once  to  deny  herself  to  Troilus  and  then  eagerly  to 
accept  his  unlawful  love  without  any  explanation  of  her 
change  of  attitude;  next  she  parts  sorrowfully  from  Tro- 
ilus; and  when  we  last  see  her  she  is  dallying  with  Diomed, 
to  whom  she  is  about  to  surrender  herself  in  mere  wanton- 
ness. 

In  more  than  half  of  the  piece  the  love  story  is  allowed 
to  drop  out  of  sight,  while  we  are  distracted  by  a  galli- 
maufry of  debates  and  battles.  The  play  is  a  patchwork 
of  amorous  intrigues,  of  wrangling  oratory  and  of  gladi- 
atorial combats;  the  final  battle  scene  is  puerile,  not  to 
call  it  infantile,  and  it  belongs  to  a  very  primitive  period 
of  dramatic  art.  The  play  is  an  incoherent  and  frag- 
mentary jumble,  with  no  unity  of  action,  no  continuity  of 
interest,  no  dominating  figure  on  which  we  may  center  our 
attention.  Uninteresting  as  a  whole,  it  is  infrequently 
interesting  in  any  of  its  episodes.     Dramaturgically  it  is 


THE  COMEDY-DRAMAS  231 

the  least  successful  of  all  the  plays  accredited  to  Shak- 
spere;  and  this  is  the  reason  why  it  long  ago  vanished  from 
the  stage.  It  lacks  even  the  impelling  self-will  which  lent 
a  certain  sort  of  interest  to  the  pursuit  of  Bertram  by 
Helena.  The  deficiency  of  action  and  the  absence  of 
motive  combine  to  make  the  drama  dull  in  any  actual 
performance. 

That  the  story  should  have  been  thrown  together 
loosely  in  this  helter-skelter  fashion  supplies  us  a  reason 
for  doubting  whether  Shakspere  was  here  availing  himself 
of  the  earlier  piece  on  the  same  subject,  which  we  know 
to  have  existed.  He  seems  to  have  drawn  his  material 
direct  from  a  medieval  tale  about  Troy,  one  form  of  which 
had  been  vigorously  Englished  by  Caxton,  while  another 
had  been  utilized  earlier  by  Chaucer.  But  from  Chaucer 
Shakspere  takes  over  at  most  the  character  of  Pandarus, 
while  in  Chapman's  translation  of  Homer  he  finds  only 
the  suggestion  of  the  character  of  Thersites.  The  major 
part  of  his  story,  in  so  far  as  the  piece  can  be  said  to 
have  any  story,  he  borrows  from  Caxton's  translation, 
as  he  was  to  borrow  the  major  part  of  the  stories  of 
'Julius  Caesar'  and  'Antony  and  Cleopatra'  from  North's 
translation  of  Plutarch.  But  in  deriving  matter  from  Plu- 
tarch he  was  to  go  to  a  worthy  source,  and  he  heightened 
what  he  drew  from  it,  whereas  in  going  to  Caxton  he  is 
drawing  from  a  defiled  spring,  and  he  debases  what  he 
derives  from  it.  In  the  plays  taken  from  Plutarch  he 
is  superior  to  his  material,  fine  as  that  is;  and  in  the  play 
taken  from  Caxton  he  is  inferior  to  his  material,  tawdry 
as  that  is. 

Puzzling  as  is  Shakspere's  dramaturgic  feebleness  here, 
even  more  puzzling  is  his  desire  to  debase  the  heroic 
figures  he  dimly  glimpsed.     He  has  no  mercy  on  any  of  the 


232         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

stalwart  warriors  of  Greece;  and  he  pitilessly  exposes  them 
to  corroding  ridicule.  To  him  all  these  heroes  are  funda- 
mentally unheroic.  To  him  Achilles  and  Agamemnon  and 
Ajax  are  a  lot  of  dull  brutes  and  boastful  cowards.  He 
seizes  upon  every  possible  pettiness  and  sets  it  in  the  fore- 
front. He  puts  them  under  the  microscope  of  his  disin- 
tegrating irony  and  dissects  them  with  a  merciless  scalpel. 
In  this  assault  upon  consecrated  renown  Shakspere  goes 
far  beyond  the  mild  iconoclasm  of  Bernard  Shaw  in  his 
*  Caesar  and  Cleopatra/  He  almost  anticipates  the  opera- 
bouffe  derision  of  the  '  Belle  Helene'  of  Meilhac  and  Ha- 
levy,  a  derision  redeemed  by  humorous  sympathy.  Shak- 
spere's  Achilles  is  not  far  removed  from  the  bouillant 
Achille  of  the  two  clever  French  wits  and  his  Agamemnon 
is  not  unlike  their  marl  de  la  reine.  Why  Shakspere,  who 
has  so  noble  an  appreciation  of  the  loftily  heroic,  de- 
scends thus  to  cheapen  the  heroes  of  Homer  must  remain 
an  unsolvable  enigma. 

It  might  be  suggested  that  he  prepares  the  play  spe- 
cially for  the  actors,  providing  them  with  an  endless  suc- 
cession of  sonorous  speeches,  often  weighty  with  wisdom 
and  often  instinct  with  poetry,  that  he  is  giving  his 
fellow-performers  a  chance  to  take  part  in  a  prize  debate, 
each  in  his  turn  having  occasion  to  spout  loud-sounding 
oratory,  "speeches  that  you  can  sink  your  teeth  in"  (to 
employ  the  apt  phrase  of  the  old-school  actor  in  Pinero's 
play).  But  this  suggestion,  alluring  as  it  may  be  at  first 
glance,  does  not  approve  itself  on  further  consideration. 
If  this  is  Shakspere's  intent,  he  plainly  overreaches  him- 
self, since  the  speechmaking  is  so  excessive  that  it  must 
have  been  fatiguing  even  to  the  Elizabethan  audiences, 
greedy  as  they  were  for  grandiloquent  rhetoric.  And 
after  all  is  said,  a  debate,  or  a  sequence  of  debates,  can 


THE  COMEDY-DRAMAS  233 

never  be  acceptable  as  a  substitute  for  a  drama;  and  no 
one  would  discover  this  more  swiftly  than  the  actors  who 
took  part  in  the  long-drawn  discussions. 

Although  the  play  is  without  any  possible  popularity  on 
the  stage,  it  is  not  without  qualities  which  demand  con- 
sideration in  the  study.  It  is  unworthy  of  Shakspere  as  a 
playwright,  but  it  sometimes  heightens  our  opinion  of  him 
as  a  poet  and  as  a  philosopher.  Even  more  does  it  dis- 
close his  power  as  a  psychologist.  He  has  here  given  us  a 
group  of  unheroic  and  unlovely  characters,  marvelously 
etched,  bitten  into  the  plate  by  the  acid  of  his  satire. 
Never  in  any  of  his  plays  did  he  create  a  character  more 
evil-mouthed  than  Thersites,  and  hardly  ever  did  he 
create  a  character  more  consistent  and  more  convincing. 
Thersites  is  incessant  in  railing;  he  is  full  of  all  manner 
of  uncharitableness,  boiling  over  with  envy,  hatred  and 
malice;  he  is  a  common  scold  whose  tongue  is  against 
every  man;  he  is  mean  and  malignant,  voiding  his  venom 
on  humanity  at  large.  This  vituperative  and  vitriolic 
personality  is  alive  in  every  utterance,  with  an  appalling 
vitality;  and  his  temper  is  a  forerunner  of  that  which  we 
find  more  than  once  in  Swift,  whom  Shakspere  here  antici- 
pates, as  he  anticipated  so  many  other  of  the  authors  who 
were  to  come  after  him. 


V 

With  these  three  pieces  Shakspere  bids  farewell  to 
comedy,  for  the  'Tempest'  can  be  called  a  comedy  only 
by  granting  a  large  inclusiveness  to  the  word.  If  the 
approximate  date  which  is  generally  given  to  'Troilus  and 
Cressida'  is  fairly  exact,  then  that  is  the  last  of  the  plays 
in  which  there  is  any  large  proportion  of  wit  and  humor. 


234         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Evidently  thereafter  the  comic  aspects  of  life  were  less 
inspiring  to  him.  His  mind  was  engaged  with  larger  and 
graver  themes.  In  no  one  of  his  later  plays,  various  as 
they  are  in  substance  and  in  style,  have  we  anything  which 
recalls  the  juicy  humor  of  Falstaff;  and  we  have  very  little 
which  reminds  us  of  the  joyous  gaiety  of  Rosalind  and 
Beatrice.  Now  and  again,  in  an  occasional  episode  and 
in  a  casual  character,  we  may  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
exuberance  which  charmed  us  in  the  earlier  romantic- 
comedies;  but  the  tone  of  the  later  plays  is  almost  unfail- 
ingly serious.  Even  if  there  is  sporadic  humor  here  and 
there,  it  is  generally  employed  only  as  a  temporary  relief 
for  the  stress  of  tragic  emotion.  Such,  for  example,  is  the 
brief  appearance  of  the  Porter  in  'Macbeth.'  Not  a  few 
of  Shakspere's  later  plays  are  almost  without  lighter 
passages. 

The  three  incongruous  pieces  which  have  been  discussed 
in  this  chapter  are  not  true  comedies;  they  may  be  called 
comedy-dramas  or  tragi-comedies;  but  in  fact  they  belong 
to  a  group  for  which  we  have  no  satisfactory  name.  In 
Shakspere's  works  they  are  usually  classed  with  his  come- 
dies, perhaps  mainly  because  they  could  not  fairly  be 
classed  either  with  the  tragedies  or  with  the  histories. 
Assuredly  they  are  far  from  being  comic  in  their  intent 
or  in  their  effect.  They  move  us  to  sadness  rather  than 
to  mirth.  They  are  evidence  that  Shakspere,  who  had  al- 
ready attained  to  true  tragedy,  had  not  found  the  formula 
for  comedy.  And  a  perfectly  adequate  and  completely 
satisfactory  formula  for  comedy  he  never  did  attain, 
however  much  he  may  have  delighted  us  with  humor- 
ous dramas  in  which  he  discloses  his  keen  insight  into 
the  pettinesses  and  the  frivolities  of  humanity.  There  is 
an  exalted  type  of  comedy  corresponding  to  an  exalted 


THE  COMEDY-DRAMAS  235 

type  of  tragedy,  a  lively  play  of  contemporary  life  and 
manners  which  conforms  to  Cicero's  definition;  it  is  "an 
imitation  of  life,  a  mirror  of  custom,  an  image  of  truth"; 
and  it  approximates  to  Ben  Jonson's  comment  on  Cicero's 
phrase  in  that  it  is  "a  thing  throughout  pleasant  and 
ridiculous,  and  accommodated  to  the  correction  of  man- 
ners." It  may  have  been  achieved  by  Menander,  al- 
though this  is  not  very  likely.  It  was  certainly  attained 
by  Moliere,  perhaps  most  successfully  in  the  'Femmes 
Savantes';  and  the  comic  dramatists  who  have  come 
after  Moliere  found  his  formula  ready  to  their  hands — 
Congreve  in  the  'Way  of  the  World,'  Sheridan  in  the 
'School  for  Scandal,'  Beaumarchais  in  the  'Barber  of  Se- 
ville,' Augier  and  Sandeau  in  the  'Gendre  de  M.  Poirier.' 
This  was  a  formula  that  Shakspere  could  not  foresee  and 
that  the  condition  of  the  drama  in  England  and  in  his 
time  did  not  prompt  him  to  discover  for  himself.  He  has 
left  us  farces  of  sundry  kinds,  sometimes  almost  lifted  to 
the  level  of  this  high-comedy — if  we  may  so  call  the  type 
Moliere  perfected.  He  has  made  us  his  eternal  debtors 
for  the  delight  we  have  taken  in  his  romantic-comedies, 
wherein  the  adventures  of  the  more  amusing  characters 
are  set  in  a  framework  of  dark  plotting  and  of  Machiavel- 
lian machination.  He  saw  fit  later  to  compose  the  less 
worthy  and  less  pleasant  comedy-dramas  considered  in 
this  chapter.  But  our  gratitude  for  what  he  has  done 
ought  not  to  close  our  eyes  to  what  he  has  not  done;  it 
must  not  make  us  blind  to  the  fact  that  he  did  not  write 
any  play  which  belongs  strictly  to  the  purest  type  of 
high-comedy,  the  comedy  uncontaminated  by  the  ar- 
bitrariness of  farce  or  by  the  stringency  of  drama. 

It  may  sound  like  a  paradox  to  say  that  comedy  is  more 
difficult  than  tragedy;  but  there  would  be  at  least  a  sug- 


236         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

gestion  of  truth  in  the  daring  assertion.  Comedy  of  any  of 
the  lower  types  is  common  enough  and  easy  enough;  but 
high-comedy,  in  the  narrow  meaning  of  the  term,  is  very 
rare  in  all  literatures,  far  rarer  than  tragedy.  In  Greece 
there  is  only  the  doubtful  Menander  to  set  over  against 
iEschylus  and  Sophocles  and  Euripides;  and  in  France 
there  is  only  Moliere  to  fellowship  with  Corneille  and  Ra- 
cine. That  success  in  one  form  of  art  is  less  frequent 
than  success  in  another  form  of  art  may  be  taken  as  evi- 
dence that  the  former  is  at  least  more  difficult  than  the 
latter.  Perhaps  because  the  highest  type  of  comedy  is 
more  difficult,  it  has  been  able  to  develop  itself  only  after 
tragedy  is  solidly  established  and  has  come  to  a  conscious- 
ness of  its  methods.  Menander,  so  it  is  believed,  was 
deeply  influenced  by  Euripides  in  the  form  as  well  as  in 
the  temper  of  his  comedies;  and  Moliere  in  his  greater 
comedies  had  before  his  eyes  the  severe  simplicity  of  Cor- 
neille. 

Here  perhaps  is  a  hint  for  the  explanation  of  Shak- 
spere's  inability  to  bestow  upon  his  comedies  the  self-suffi- 
cient unity  which  he  gave  to  his  tragedies.  By  the  time 
that  Shakspere  had  been  able  to  find  for  himself  a  fit 
formula  for  tragedy  and  to  prove  the  value  of  this  formula 
in  'Othello'  and  'Macbeth/  he  had  already  lost  his  interest 
in  comedy  and  was  ready  to  abandon  it.  There  is  matter 
for  speculation  whether  Shakspere's  best  comedies  might 
not  have  been  composed  upon  a  very  different  pattern  if 
they  had  followed  instead  of  preceding  his  best  tragedies. 
Had  this  happened,  there  is  at  least  a  possibility  that 
Shakspere  might  have  anticipated  Moliere  in  discovering 
the  true  type  of  high-comedy,  in  accord  with  Cicero's  defi- 
nition. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

' OTHELLO' 

I 

It  is  in  'Othello'  that  Shakspere  first  completely 
achieves  the  full  richness  of  true  tragedy  to  which  he  has 
risen  at  last.  '  Romeo  and  Juliet,'  beautiful  as  it  is  in 
spirit  and  in  execution,  is  almost  as  lyric  as  it  is  tragic; 
and  ' Hamlet'  retains  not  a  few  characteristics  of  the 
tragedy-of-blood  out  of  which  it  had  been  fashioned. 
'Othello'  is  purely  tragic,  with  scarcely  any  admixture  of 
lyric  and  with  no  trace  of  the  revenge-play.  It  recalls 
Gray's  remark  about  an  old  ballad,  in  that  "Aristotle's 
best  rules  are  observed  in  it  in  a  manner  that  shows 
the  author  had  never  heard  of  Aristotle."  Probably, 
'Othello'  is  the  earliest  of  Shakspere's  tragedies  in  which 
Aristotle,  with  his  Greek  open-mindedness,  would  have 
recognized  a  new  departure  of  tragic  art  as  worthy  of 
analysis  as  the  best  that  Sophocles  had  achieved.  Its 
subject-matter,  its  warmth  of  passion,  its  elaboration  of 
plot  and  its  pictorial  swiftness  would  have  seemed  strange 
to  the  Greek;  and  at  first  they  might  have  been  not  a 
little  disconcerting.  But  the  acute  Aristotle,  although 
he  might  have  been  shocked  by  the  killing  of  the  heroine 
before  the  eyes  of  the  spectators,  would  have  discovered 
that  his  essential  principles  were  exemplified,  since 
'Othello'  conforms  to  the  conditions  prescribed  by  him. 
Although  founded  upon  an  Italian  tale,  'Othello'  is  fun- 
damentally English  in  its  spirit  and  Elizabethan  English 

237 


238         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

at  that;  and  yet  Aristotle  could  not  fail  to  see  that  it 
has  the  stately  massiveness  of  theme  which  ennobles  the 
great  Greek  dramas. 

Less  vital  as  it  may  be,  and  less  universal  in  its  subject 
than  'Hamlet,'  'Othello'  is  technically  superior;  it  is  better 
built,  with  fewer  divergencies  and  excrescences.  Profess- 
or Thorndike  has  drawn  attention  to  its  relinquishment 
of  current  methods,  in  that  "it  is  neither  a  chronicle- 
history  nor  a  Senecan  tragedy.  There  is  no  presentation 
of  history  and  little  of  court  ceremonies.  There  are  no 
battles,  no  long  exposition,  no  ghosts,  no  spectacles,  no 
insanity,  and  almost  no  comedy.  It  has  few  persons  and 
virtually  a  single  action."  Its  movement  never  flags  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end,  except  for  a  little  space  when  the 
scene  is  suddenly  shifted  to  Cyprus.  But  after  the  arrival 
of  Othello  at  the  island  he  is  to  rule  until  his  death  the 
onward  progress  is  straightforward  and  irresistible.  In 
mere  form,  in  the  skill  of  its  structure,  'Othello'  has  no 
rival  in  all  Shakspere's  plays.  The  plotting  may  not  be 
absolutely  flawless,  since,  for  one  thing,  the  story  moves  so 
swiftly  that  there  is  actually  no  time  allowed  for  any  pos- 
sible intrigue  between  Desdemona  and  Cassio,  such  as 
Iago  gets  Othello  to  accept.  But  the  plot  is  wrought  out 
with  the  loving  care  which  Shakspere  bestows  upon  a  play 
only  when  its  theme  profoundly  attracts  him  and  when  it 
impels  him  to  put  forth  his  full  strength.  Imagination 
was  his  as  the  gift  of  heaven,  and  insight  into  character 
also;  but  plot-making  can  be  successful  only  as  the  result 
of  taking  thought;  it  depends  upon  a  willingness  to  plan 
in  advance  with  the  utmost  caution,  so  that  the  specta- 
tor shall  accept  instantly  what  passes  before  his  eyes. 
It  is  the  result  rather  of  the  humbler  invention  than  of 
the  loftier  imagination.     It  is  dependent  upon  an  assidu- 


'OTHELLO'  239 

ous  attention  to  details  which  may  seem  trifles;  but,  as 
Michael  Angelo  put  it  pithily,  "trifles  make  perfection, 
and  perfection  is  not  a  trifle." 

Shakspere  had  revealed  his  willingness  to  submit  him- 
self to  this  discipline  in  constructing  the  framework  of  an 
intricate  plot  as  early  as  the  'Comedy  of  Errors,'  but  he 
did  not  always  or  often  thus  put  himself  out  to  display 
the  dexterity  of  which  he  was  capable.  Even  in  'Hamlet,' 
where  he  is  supported  by  the  plot  devised  by  an  earlier 
dramatist,  he  leaves  a  few  loose  threads.  In  'Othello,' 
however,  as  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  earlier,  and  in  'Mac- 
beth' later — three  plays  in  which  the  construction  is 
wholly  of  his  own  contriving — he  shows  what  he  could 
do  when  he  chose  to  exercise  his  ingenuity  and  when  he 
was  bent  on  doing  his  best.  And  in  these  three  plays 
he  reveals  a  mastery  of  all  the  tricks  of  the  trade  such  as 
we  can  discover  also  in  playwrights  as  different  in  aim 
as  Scribe  and  Ibsen.  Shakspere  was  here  working  purely 
as  an  artist  in  stagecraft,  delighting  in  his  labor,  and 
therefore  attaining  an  excellence  far  beyond  the  modest 
demands  made  upon  the  Tudor  dramatist  by  the  un- 
sophisticated  and  easily  pleased  Elizabethan  audiences. 

'Othello'  is  almost  perfect  in  its  form;  and  it  is  only 
in  the  earlier  scenes  at  Cyprus  that  the  interest  of  the 
action  is  allowed  to  slacken  even  a  little.  Every  episode 
is  contrived  to  perform  the  triple  function  of  helping  on 
the  catastrophe,  of  exhibiting  character,  and  of  being  in- 
teresting in  itself.  The  exposition  is  one  of  Shakspere's 
very  best,  than  which  there  can  be  no  higher  praise.  It 
is  as  clear,  as  lively,  and  as  pictorial  as  the  expositions  of 
'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  of  'Hamlet'  and  of  'Macbeth.'  The 
opening  scene,  at  night  when  Iago  notifies  Brabantio  of 
Othello's  abduction  of  Desdemona,  takes  us  at  once  into 


24o        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  heart  of  the  action.  It  leads  instantly  to  the  scene 
before  the  Duke  wherein  Othello  justifies  himself.  And 
then  Brabantio's  final  warning  to  Othello  that  Desdemona 
has  deceived  her  father  and  may  deceive  her  husband — 
this  rounds  out  the  opening  act  into  a  compact  whole  and 
hangs  up  the  interrogation-mark  of  expectancy. 

Nor  is  Shakspere,  absorbed  as  he  is  in  the  creating  of 
character  and  in  the  enmeshing  of  character  in  plot,  for- 
getful of  the  few  spectacular  possibilities  of  his  story.  He 
bestows  upon  his  play  all  the  picturesque  accessories  of 
which  the  plot  was  capable.  He  gives  us  torches  by 
night,  a  solemn  sitting  of  the  stately  council,  a  suddenly 
raised  riot  under  the  silent  stars  and  the  loud  clangor  of 
the  island  bells.  He  keeps  in  mind  the  need  of  amusing 
the  eyes  and  of  delighting  the  ears  of  the  groundlings  who 
stood  restless  in  the  yard,  while  at  the  same  time  he  was 
telling  his  story  with  a  consummate  artistry  which  even 
the  university-bred  gallants  who  sat  upon  the  stage  were 
not  likely  to  appreciate  fully. 


II 

The  story  he  chooses  to  tell  he  found  in  an  Italian  tale 
of  which  there  was  a  French  translation.  The  English 
play  out  of  which  Shakspere  made  '  Hamlet'  is  lost,  and 
we  can  only  guess  at  its  form  and  content;  but  the  Italian 
tale  out  of  which  he  made  'Othello'  is  extant.  We  can 
study  his  source  for  ourselves;  and  the  result  is  illumi- 
nating. We  can  analyze  the  material  which  Shakspere 
found  ready  to  his  hand  and  we  can  observe  the  use  to 
which  he  put  it.  In  itself  it  is  a  good  story  that  the 
Italian  told,  a  story  common  enough  in  Renascence  Italy 
and  vulgar  enough  in  its  crude  brutality.     As  we  run 


'OTHELLO5  241 

through  it  we  may  recall  similar  stories  of  marital  revenge, 
reported  in  our  yellower  papers  and  set  off  with  a  need- 
less luxury  of  scare-heads.  It  appears  to  lend  itself  most 
easily  to  a  play  little  better  than  a  raw  melodrama,  car- 
ried on  by  characters  outlined  in  profile  only,  and  existing 
only  for  the  sake  of  the  plot  in  which  they  are  involved. 
It  scarcely  seems  to  contain  the  promise  of  a  true  tragedy 
in  which  the  characters  exist  for  themselves  and  in  which 
the  action  is  what  it  is  only  because  the  characters  are 
what  they  are.  We  may  even  go  farther  and  call  the 
story  painful  in  its  episodes  and  in  some  measure  even 
revolting.  But  these  criticisms  might  be  urged  against 
the  story  of  'Hamlet'  also,  considered  solely  as  a  story, 
and  even  against  the  story  of  'QEdipus  the  King/ 

What  Shakspere  does  is  to  take  the  narrative  of  the 
Italian  writer  and  to  put  it  back  into  solution,  so  to  speak, 
that  it  might  recrystallize  in  the  form  of  drama  and  not 
narrative.  He  profits  by  the  invention  of  Giraldi  Cin- 
tio;  but  he  does  not  feel  himself  in  the  least  bound  to  fol- 
low the  lines  laid  out  by  the  novelist.  The  tale  the  Italian 
had  told  as  a  story  Shakspere  tells  as  a  play,  with  all  the 
modifications  imposed  by  the  change  of  form  and  with  all 
the  emendations  compelled  by  his  intention  to  raise  a 
melodramatic  narrative  into  a  poetic  tragedy.  What  was 
little  better  than  a  pathetic  anecdote  he  enlarges  and 
transfigures,  partly  by  adroit  and  subtle  changes  in  the 
conduct  of  the  story,  and  partly,  indeed  mainly,  by  the 
addition  of  new  characters  to  carry  on  the  story  as  he  has 
reconceived  it  and  by  transforming  intellectually  the  char- 
acters provided  for  him  by  the  Italian.  These  altera- 
tions and  these  additions  are  more  abundant  in  'Othello' 
than  they  were  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  in  which  he  was 
also  reworking  an  Italian  tale  of  amorous  misfortune.    In 


242         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

'Othello/  as  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  he  is  quick  to  take  a 
hint,  to  create  a  character,  or  to  build  up  a  situation  out  of 
a  casual  suggestion  in  his  source;  and  again  he  discloses  his 
possession  of  the  intuition  and  the  instinct  for  theatrical 
effect,  which  is  ever  the  birthright  of  the  born  play- 
maker.  Shakspere  has  an  instant  apprehension  of  the 
scenes  that  must  be  shown  in  action. 

The  modifications  he  makes  are  so  many  that  only  the 
most  significant  can  here  be  indicated.  First  of  all,  he 
hurries  the  languid  action  of  the  original  tale,  just  as  he 
had  done  earlier  when  he  made  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  out  of 
Brooke's  meandering  poem.  He  compacts  the  plot  mer- 
cilessly; he  simplifies  it;  he  makes  it  clear  and  direct;  he 
intensifies  it;  and,  above  all,  he  elevates  it  and  purifies  it. 
He  cuts  out  Iago's  lust  for  Desdemona,  and  therefore  he 
avoids  a  scene  in  which  Iago  might  dare  to  disclose  his 
unholy  desire  to  Desdemona;  apparently  he  felt  that  any 
suggestion  of  an  amour  with  Iago  was  degrading  to  his 
delicate  heroine.  He  refuses  to  let  Iago  help  Othello  in 
the  killing  of  Desdemona;  apparently  he  felt  that  this 
would  vulgarize  both  hero  and  heroine.  He  rejects  the 
idea  that  Othello  would  kill  Desdemona  out  of  mere  re- 
venge for  the  wrong  she  has  done  him,  since  Othello  is  too 
large  for  any  pettiness  of  vengeance.  He  makes  Othello 
smother  Desdemona,  instead  of  beating  her  to  death 
with  a  stocking  filled  with  sand.  He  cuts  off  the  trailing 
conclusion  of  the  Italian  narrative  and  lets  the  action 
culminate  in  the  suicide  of  Othello,  after  which  nothing 
matters. 

Shakspere  adds  the  character  of  Desdemona's  father, 
and  thus  supplies  himself  with  the  stuff  out  of  which  he 
was  to  weave  his  superbly  effective  opening  scenes.  He 
adds  the  character  of  Roderigo,  and  thus  supplies  Iago 


'OTHELLO'  243 

with  a  pliant  tool  whom  the  wary  schemer  can  employ, 
until  at  last  the  villain  gets  rid  of  his  dupe  by  a  careless 
assassination.  He  cleanses  the  character  of  Emilia,  and 
deprives  her  of  any  suspicion  as  to  the  evil  deeds  and  as 
to  the  true  nature  of  her  husband,  thus  bringing  home  to 
us  the  diabolical  cleverness  of  Iago — clever  enough  even  to 
deceive  his  own  wife.  He  adds  the  ingenious  episode  of 
Cassio's  allowing  himself  to  be  overtaken  with  liquor,  an 
excellent  invention,  in  that  it  sets  before  us  Iago's  Machi- 
avellian ingenuity  of  intrigue,  while  it  also  rounds  out 
the  character  of  Cassio  himself  into  an  ampler  humanity. 
Above  all,  Shakspere  transforms  the  character  of  Othello. 
In  the  Italian  tale  the  Moor  is  a  barbarian  and  a  violent 
brute;  and  in  the  English  play  he  discloses  himself  as  a 
true  gentleman,  courteous  of  speech,  dignified  in  bearing, 
impressive  in  manner,  not  given  to  jealousy  and  slow  to 
suspect.  As  Shakspere  sets  him  before  us,  Othello  has 
not  only  the  elevation  of  a  tragic  hero,  but  also  something 
large  and  elemental  which  belongs  to  himself;  and  of  this 
there  is  nothing  in  the  Italian  tale. 

As  Professor  Bradley  points  out,  Othello  is  the  most 
romantic  of  Shakspere's  tragic  heroes,  more  romantic  even 
than  Romeo,  who  borrows  his  romance  rather  from  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  story.  Othello  is  romantic  in  himself, 
by  his  birth  and  by  his  career.  He  is  a  man  of  royal 
descent  and  of  strange  adventures,  a  wanderer  in  unknown 
regions,  a  warrior  of  valiant  deeds.  Of  Oriental  race,  he 
has  risen  to  honor  amidst  a  European  people  by  sheer 
force  of  character,  by  martial  courage  and  by  military 
skill.  He  is  a  man  of  large  mold  arrived  at  a  sagacious 
maturity,  not  lyric  like  Romeo  and  not  introspective  like 
Hamlet,  yet  a  poet  in  temper  as  well  as  in  phrase.  He  is 
independent,  yet  trusting,   eager  for  friendship  and  for 


244        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

love.  Romantic  as  he  is  in  himself,  he  is  tragic  also;  the 
atmosphere  of  the  play  is  heavy  with  impending  doom; 
and  it  is  lightened  only  by  an  intermittent  irony  which 
brings  out  the  poignancy  of  the  tragedy. 


Ill 

It  is  the  essence  of  the  drama  that  it  shall  show  the  con- 
flict of  contending  passions  and  that  it  shall  set  before 
us  characters  of  indomitable  will  who  know  what  they 
want  and  who  bend  every  effort  to  get  it.  The  main- 
spring of  the  plot  of  'Othello'  is  Iago's  implacable  deter- 
mination to  destroy  Cassio  and  to  bring  down  Othello  in 
the  ruin  he  has  wrought.  It  is  Iago's  will  which  works  all 
the  evil.  Iago  knows  what  he  wants  and  he  lets  us  know 
it;  and  we  sit  silent  and  breathless  as  we  see  the  successive 
steps  that  he  takes  to  attain  his  damnable  object.  He  is 
the  motive  power  of  the  mechanism,  and  he  controls  all 
the  other  persons  in  the  play  to  achieve  his  fell  purpose. 
He  is  the  traditional  stage-villain,  the  master  of  all  stage- 
villains;  and  he  is  at  the  same  time  one  of  Shakspere's 
subtlest  and  most  searching  creations.  He  is  a  devil  in- 
carnate; and  yet  he  is  also  an  accusable  human  being. 
He  is  inhuman  only  that  he  has  no  touch  of  conscience,  no 
doubt  in  himself,  no  hesitation  in  driving  his  dark  and 
deadly  scheme  faster  and  faster  to  its  full  fruition.  His 
blackness  of  soul  is  appalling;  his  wickedness  passes  belief; 
and  yet  as  we  see  him  going  about  his  infernal  business, 
we  accept  him  not  only  as  a  possibility  but  as  a  fact.  We 
may  well  doubt  that  such  a  fiend  in  human  shape  could 
exist;  but  when  we  behold  him  before  us,  all  incredulity 
vanishes  and  we  accept  him  for  what  he  is.  Abnormal 
he  may  be  in  the  depth  of  his  depravity,  but  alive  he  is 


'OTHELLO'  245 

beyond  all  question.  He  is  proud  of  his  own  intellect, 
and  he  despises  the  simpler  folk  he  is  overreaching.  He 
has  a  boundless  joy  in  his  own  superiority  and  a  profound 
contempt  for  every  one  else. 

In  method  of  presentation  Shakspere  follows  the  prim- 
itive procedure  of  the  Elizabethan  platform-stage,  when 
the  actor  was  in  closest  proximity  to  the  spectators — in 
fact,  almost  in  personal  contact  with  them.  This  prox- 
imity explains,  even  if  it  may  not  altogether  justify,  the 
confidential  communications  which  the  characters  of  the 
Tudor  drama  are  in  the  habit  of  making  to  the  spectators 
before  them  and  around  them.  On  the  platform-stage  of 
those  distant  days,  so  different  from  the  picture-frame 
stage  of  our  own  time,  the  confidential  soliloquy  did  not 
seem  unnatural,  even  when  the  character  went  so  far  as  to 
discuss  his  own  villainy  without  the  self-flattering  subter- 
fuges and  self-deceiving  ethical  disguises  which  generally 
prevent  even  the  worst  of  men  from  perceiving  them- 
selves as  they  appear  to  others.  We  know  Iago  for  the 
villain  he  is  because  he  confesses  to  us  his  own  villainy, 
because  he  confides  to  us  in  advance  his  own  hideous 
machinations. 

Iago,  it  is  true,  does  talk  with  some  slight  freedom  to 
Roderigo,  his  witless  dupe;  but  it  is  only  to  Roderigo, 
whom  he  despises  and  whom  he  holds  not  to  be  dangerous, 
that  he  lowers  even  for  a  moment  the  mask  he  wears  before 
all  the  other  persons  in  the  play.  But  to  the  audience  he 
is  perfectly  frank.  The  spectators  he  takes  into  his  confi- 
dence from  the  first;  and  in  soliloquy  after  soliloquy  he 
tells  them  plainly  what  manner  of  man  he  is.  The  char- 
acters are  deceived  to  their  ultimate  undoing;  but  the 
spectators  are  never  for  an  instant  in  doubt  as  to  Iago's 
baseness.     The  procedure  of  the  playwright  may  be  prim- 


246        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

itive  enough,  but  it  is  tremendously  effective  in  the  the- 
ater even  to-day.  Iago  is  intensely  egotistic;  he  is  so  su- 
premely interested  in  himself  and  so  taken  in  by  his  own 
mental  superiority  that  he  has  a  boastful  joy  in  self- 
revelation. 

Yet  even  in  these  soliloquies  in  which  Iago  explains  to 
the  audience  his  dark  intentions  and  in  which  he  declares 
his  several  motives  for  hating  Othello  and  Cassio,  he  does 
not  succeed  in  making  clear  to  us  just  what  these  motives 
are,  or  at  least  he  does  not  convince  us  that  these  really 
are  his  motives  and  that  they  account  adequately  for  his 
hellish  animosity.  He  tells  Roderigo  that  he  hates 
Othello  because  Cassio  has  been  promoted  over  his  head; 
he  tells  the  audience  that  he  suspects  Othello  of  an  in- 
trigue with  Emilia;  and  later  he  tells  the  audience  that  he 
also  suspects  Cassio  of  an  intrigue  with  Emilia.  These 
two  accusations  against  Emilia  are  not  supported  by  any- 
thing in  the  play;  and  they  are  contradicted  by  all  that 
we  know  about  Emilia,  who  appears  to  us  to  be  as  de- 
voted to  her  husband  and  as  willing  to  do  what  he  wishes 
as  she  is  unsuspicious  of  his  real  nature.  It  may  be 
doubted  whether  Iago  himself  really  believes  in  the  pos- 
sibility of  either  of  these  intrigues  with  which  he  charges 
his  wife,  except  that  it  was  always  easy  for  him  to  believe 
in  evil.  The  suspicions  seem  to  be  put  in  his  mouth  by 
Shakspere  to  supply  some  sort  of  justification  for  his  in- 
fernal scheme  of  revenge.  As  justifications  they  are  uncon- 
vincing; and,  in  fact,  no  justification  is  really  needful. 
Iago  seeks  to  ruin  Othello  and  Desdemona  and  Cassio, 
not  for  any  motive  he  may  allege  or  imagine,  but  mainly 
because  he  is  Iago,  because  he  is  what  he  is.  Shakspere 
has  created  a  character  of  absolute  foulness,  lacking 
the  self-captivating  casuistry  by  which  feebler  men  might 


'  OTHELLO'  247 

justify  themselves;  and  he  has  projected  this  sinister  per- 
sonality with  so  compelling  a  power  that  we  cannot  but 
accept  Iago  for  what  he  is,  a  creature  capable  of  "motive- 
less malignity"  and  of  doing  evil  for  the  sake  of  evil.  A 
stage-villain  he  is  externally,  no  doubt;  and  perhaps 
Shakspere  conceived  him  primarily  as  a  stage-villain — a 
larger-sized  Don  John  or  Richard,  a  necessary  cog  in  the 
wheel  of  fate;  but  whatever  Shakspere's  original  intent 
may  have  been,  he  goes  far  beyond  it.  And,  as  a  result, 
Iago  transcends  the  type.  He  is  alive  in  every  fiber;  and 
we  follow  his  misdeeds  without  question  as  to  his  motives, 
careless  as  to  the  force  which  impels  him.  He  has  a  self- 
control  so  marvelous  that  he  impresses  all  who  know  him 
as  bluff  and  plain-spoken  and  devoid  of  guile;  and  Shak- 
spere has  character  after  character  call  him  "honest,"  so 
that  we  may  the  more  readily  accept  Iago's  apparently 
unwilling  testimony  against  Desdemona  and  Cassio. 

There  is  no  denying  that  Shakspere  is  false  to  the  facts 
of  life  in  allowing  Iago  to  be  so  frank  in  regard  to  his  own 
villainy,  as  he  was  earlier  in  letting  Richard  III  see  him- 
self as  others  saw  him.  The  Elizabethan  tradition  which 
authorized  this  departure  from  truth  had  advantages 
which  Shakspere  never  thought  of  relinquishing.  When  he 
availed  himself  of  this  labor-saving  device  he  debarred  him- 
self from  the  subtler  and  more  artistic  method  employed 
by  Moliere  in  presenting  Tartuffe,  the  only  other  villain 
in  the  whole  range  of  dramatic  literature  who  is  compara- 
ble with  Iago  (since  Mephistopheles  is  not  a  man  but  the 
devil  himself).  Tartuffe  has  not  the  overwhelming  vigor 
of  Iago;  he  is  a  villainous  hypocrite  rather  than  a  hypo- 
critical villain,  and  he  is  devoid  of  the  humor  which  Iago 
has  in  abundance,  harsh  and  bitter  as  this  may  be.  But 
Tartuffe  shares  with  Iago  pride  of  intellect  and  also  sub- 


248         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

lime  self-confidence  and  scorching  contempt  for  those  he 
is  deceiving.  He  even  has  the  same  phrase  for  Orgon 
that  Iago  has  for  Othello  and  calls  him  a  man  to  be  led 
by  the  nose.  But  he  is  a  smaller  figure  than  Iago;  he  is 
rather  a  self-seeking  rascal  and  a  practical  adventurer  in 
his  own  behalf  than  the  ideal  villain  which  Iago  is.  He 
may  be  closer  to  the  facts  of  reality  than  Iago,  but  he  is 
not  more  intimately  related  to  the  truth  of  life.  Yet  in- 
ferior as  Tartuffe  may  be  to  Iago  in  height,  and  even  in 
depth,  Moliere  has  presented  him,  if  not  more  artistic- 
ally, at  least  in  accord  with  a  later  and  a  more  acceptable 
method.  Tartuffe  has  not  a  single  soliloquy  in  which 
to  lay  bare  his  black  soul,  and  not  a  single  aside  to  dis- 
close to  us  his  real  intent. 

Although  Moliere's  play  takes  its  name  from  the  hypo- 
crite, and  although  he  is  also  the  mainspring  of  its  action, 
Tartuffe  does  not  come  before  us  until  the  third  of  its  five 
acts;  and  Moliere  exerts  his  utmost  skill  so  to  prepare  for 
the  first  appearance  of  Tartuffe  that  we  are  never  in 
doubt  as  to  his  true  character,  even  if  he  never  departs 
from  the  speech  of  piety  which  is  the  cloak  for  his  evil 
designs,  a  cloak  not  to  be  laid  aside  until  it  is  no  longer  ser- 
viceable. Tightly  as  he  may  tuck  this  garment  about  him, 
we  see  beneath  his  fair  words  and  his  soft  speeches;  and 
we  await  impatiently  the  moment  when  the  raiment  of 
hypocrisy  shall  be  stripped  from  him  and  he  shall  stand 
forth  naked.  That  Iago  lingers  in  our  memories  as  a 
more  sinister  figure  than  Tartuffe  is  due  partly  to  the  fact 
that  Shakspere  puts  his  villain  into  a  tragedy  to  work 
irrevocable  ruin,  whereas  Moliere's  play,  serious  as  it 
may  be  at  moments,  is  a  comedy  after  all,  a  comedy  which 
has  to  end  happily  after  the  defeated  rascal  is  haled  to 
prison. 


'  OTHELLO'  249 

Professor  Bradley  has  warned  us  that  we  need  not  be- 
lieve what  Iago  tells  Roderigo  in  the  opening  scene.  His 
account  of  Othello's  refusal  to  give  him  the  post  bestowed 
on  Cassio  may  not  be  true,  since  we  have  only  Iago's  word 
for  it;  and  it  may  be  only  his  mendacious  invention  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment.  But  Shakspere  was  too  experienced 
a  playwright  not  to  know  that  the  spectator  cannot  help 
forming  his  impression  of  characters  not  yet  seen  from 
what  is  said  about  them  before  they  appear.  This  is  one 
of  the  most  useful  devices  of  dramaturgy;  and  we  may 
rest  assured  that  Shakspere  put  these  speeches  in  Iago's 
mouth  for  the  definite  purpose  of  making  clear  to  the  audi- 
ence that  Iago  believes  he  has  reason  to  detest  Othello. 
The  actual  truth  of  what  Iago  says  does  not  matter. 
What  matters  is  the  predisposing  effect  these  speeches 
have  upon  the  minds  of  the  audience. 

IV 

Powerfully  as  Iago  may  etch  himself  into  our  memo- 
ries, he  is  not  the  central  person  in  the  play;  he  may  be 
the  mainspring  of  the  action,  but  he  is  not  the  tragic  hero. 
If  he  had  been  the  central  figure,  then  we  should  have  only 
a  play  of  intrigue.  As  it  is,  the  drama  is  elevated  to  the 
loftier  plane  of  the  tragedy  of  character  by  the  massive 
nobility  of  Othello  himself  and  by  the  appealing  sweetness 
of  Desdemona.  She  is  all  purity,  all  affection,  all  devo- 
tion; and  Othello,  who  is  too  large  of  build  to  be  jealous 
by  nature,  knows  her  for  what  she  is  and  loves  her  with  all 
the  force  of  his  deeper  soul.  And  yet  we  see  him  made 
jealous  by  the  fiendish  cunning  of  Iago.  The  jealousy 
that  Iago  arouses  at  last  in  Othello  "converts  human 
nature  into  chaos  and  liberates  the  beast  in  man,"  as  Pro- 


250        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

fessor  Bradley  declares.  "Iago's  plot  is  Iago's  character 
in  action;  and  it  is  built  on  his  knowledge  of  Othello's 
character,  and  it  could  not  otherwise  have  succeeded."  In 
sheer  dramaturgic  dexterity,  in  the  art  of  leading  up  to  a 
situation  and  of  handling  it  when  it  arrives  in  such  fashion 
as  to  express  from  it  all  possible  emotion,  there  is  scarcely 
a  scene  in  all  dramatic  literature  more  skilful  than  this. 
Here  we  see  the  poet-psychologist  working  with  and  sup- 
ported by  the  playwright  of  genius. 

And  the  later  scene  of  accusation  between  Othello  and 
Desdemona  is  treated  with  equal  mastery  of  stage-craft 
and  with  equal  subtlety  of  insight  into  character.  Desde- 
mona is  marvelously  understood  and  rendered.  Coleridge 
quoted  Pope's  "most  women  have  no  character  at  all" 
and  asserted  that  while  Pope  meant  this  for  satire,  Shak- 
spere,  who  knew  man  and  woman  much  better,  saw  that 
in  the  eyes  of  the  other  sex  it  was  in  fact  the  perfection 
of  woman  to  be  characterless.  "Every  one  wishes  a 
Desdemona  or  Ophelia  for  a  wife — creatures  who,  though 
they  may  not  always  understand  you,  do  always  feel  you, 
and  feel  with  you."  And  never  did  Shakspere  present 
this  special  feminine  type  with  a  firmer  delicacy.  A  little 
colorless  Desdemona  may  be,  as  Ophelia  is  also  (a  part 
plainly  composed  for  the  same  boy  actor);  but  she  is  not 
really  characterless,  even  in  the  sense  that  Coleridge  sug- 
gested. She  is  a  true  woman,  with  unfailing  delicacy. 
She  refuses  to  repeat  the  hateful  word  that  Othello  used 
to  her.  In  her  great  love  she  is  not  indignant  with  him; 
rather  is  she  astonished  and  stunned.  She  had  deceived 
her  father;  she  had  half  equivocated  about  the  hand- 
kerchief; her  last  words  are  a  lie;  and  she  dies  trying  to 
defend  the  husband  who  has  slain  her.  She  does  not 
understand  Othello's  action,  but  she  pardons  it  out  of 


'  OTHELLO'  251 

the  fulness  of  her  love.  She  is  incapable  of  perceiving 
that  Othello  kills  her,  not  as  an  act  of  violent  vengeance, 
but  as  a  solemn  and  righteous  execution  of  a  guilty  wife. 

Shakspere  sympathizes  with  her,  even  if  he  does  not 
spare  the  spectators  the  almost  unbearable  pain  of  her 
murder.  He  sympathizes  also  with  Othello,  as  he  does 
with  Cassio  and  Emilia  in  a  less  degree.  One  might 
almost  venture  the  assertion  that,  artistically,  at  least,  he 
even  sympathizes  with  Iago.  He  understands  them  all, 
and  he  includes  them  all  in  his  sympathy,  because  he  un- 
derstands them.  This  vibrating  sympathy  with  his  char- 
acters is  a  most  marked  feature  of  all  Shakspere's  later 
and  greater  tragedies.  He  does  not  take  sides  with  any 
one  of  them  against  the  others;  and  he  is  never  unfair  in 
his  preferences.  He  feels  with  all  his  creatures;  and  there 
is  a  warm  glow  in  the  light  under  which  they  are  pre- 
sented to  us.  And  here  is  where  Shakspere  is  in  sharpest 
contrast  with  the  two  great  tragic  writers  of  the  rival 
modern  literature.  Corneille,  and  Racine  also,  seem  a 
little  chilly,  not  to  say  callous,  toward  the  misfortunes 
and  sufferings  of  their  heroes  and  heroines.  Perhaps  it 
would  be  going  too  far  to  assert  that  there  is  a  lack  of 
humanity  in  certain  of  the  finest  of  French  tragedies,  but 
at  least  there  is  an  undeniable  absence  of  feeling.  Brune- 
tiere  called  attention  to  the  unemotional  manner  in  which 
Corneille  brings  about  the  horrible  catastrophe  of  'Rodo- 
gune'  and  to  the  cold-blooded  unscrupulousness  with 
which  Racine's  Roxane  strangles  Bajazet. 

Shakspere's  sympathy  extends  to  the  subordinate  fig- 
ures, like  Cassio  and  Emilia.  Cassio  is  admirably  under- 
stood; and  we  are  made  to  see  his  strength  as  well  as  his 
weakness.  He  appears  only  infrequently  and  yet  we 
know  him  as  we  know  Othello  himself  and  Desdemona. 


252         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Contrast  of  character  is  always  an  element  of  dramatic 
effect,  and  Cassio  with  his  lightness  is  a  relief  to  the 
massive  simplicity  of  Othello  and  a  foil  to  the  subtle 
complexity  of  Iago.  And  in  like  manner  Emilia  is  set 
over  against  Desdemona  to  whom  she  is  devotedly  at- 
tached. Emilia  is  bold  and  blunt;  she  is  honest  but 
coarse  of  fiber.  She  is  an  earthy-minded  woman,  and  yet 
she  is  capable  of  appreciating  the  exquisite  purity  of 
Desdemona.  The  very  disparity  of  their  natures  is  a 
bond  of  attraction.  And  it  may  be  noted  furthermore 
that  Emilia  is  so  frank  of  speech  that  she  is  unlikely 
to  be  free  of  conduct.  Iago,  who  suspected  all  women, 
had  no  real  reason  for  suspecting  his  wife,  even  if  he  did 
suspect  her,  which  may  be  doubted,  since  we  have  only 
his  own  word  for  it. 

Characters  these  all  are  of  an  inexpugnable  veracity, 
and  parts  they  are  also,  composed  for  particular  actors  to 
whom  Shakspere  was  giving  the  kind  of  work  of  which 
they  had  already  proved  themselves  capable.  Burbage 
was  Othello,  as  he  had  been  Romeo  and  Hamlet;  and  the 
serving  man,  who  obtrudes  only  in  a  scene  or  two,  and 
who  is  frankly  called  the  "clown,"  was  probably  under- 
taken by  Armin.  Iago  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  actor,  prob- 
ably Condell,  who  was  soon  to  create  Edgar  in  'Lear,' 
as  Brabantio  fell  to  the  actor  who  had  created  Leonato 
in  'Much  Ado.'  Cassio  must  have  been  performed  by 
the  comedian  who  had  previously  played  Mercutio  and 
Gratiano  and  Lucio.  Desdemona  was  personated  by 
the  lad  who  had  earlier  personated  Ophelia  and  Viola; 
and  Emilia  was  cast  to  the  boy  with  the  robuster  method 
who  had  already  played  Mrs.  Ford  and  Maria.  And 
perhaps  we  are  justified  in  believing  that  Shakspere  in- 
trusted   himself  with    the    Duke,    a    part   which   would 


'OTHELLO'  253 

naturally  be  assumed  by  the  actor  who  had  been  seen 
as  Adam  in  'As  you  Like  it'  and  as  the  Ghost  in 
'Hamlet.' 

The  characters  are  not  more  skilfully  contrasted  nor 
the  parts  more  carefully  distributed  among  the  members 
of  the  company  than  is  their  speech  artistically  differen- 
tiated in  accord  with  the  importance  of  each  and  with  his 
function  in  the  play.  Cassio,  for  example,  nearly  always 
speaks  in  prose,  elevated  and  rhythmic,  but  not  absolutely 
metrical.  Othello  uses  blank  verse  and  is  unfailingly 
poetic  in  his  utterance.  Rime  is  infrequent,  and  as  there 
is  little  that  is  purely  lyric  in  the  play  we  find  few  of  those 
riming  passages,  couplet  after  couplet,  generally  stuffed 
with  fanciful  conceits  and  balanced  comparisons,  such  as 
we  may  often  note  in  most  of  his  preceding  pieces,  more 
especially  in  'All's  Well.'  Rime  appears  now  and  again  in 
an  exit-speech,  in  accord  with  the  Elizabethan  tradition. 
And  it  is  occasionally  used  for  emphasis,  apparently,  as  in 
Brabantio's  warning  to  Othello  that  the  woman  who  has 
deceived  her  father  may  deceive  her  husband.  Iago  drops 
into  rime  occasionally,  probably  for  emphasis  again,  al- 
though this  is  not  quite  so  certain  an  explanation.  Here 
we  perceive  that  Shakspere  has  now  arrived  at  a  com- 
plete mastery  of  his  tools.  He  is  able  to  use  at  will  that 
which  is  fittest  for  his  immediate  purpose;  and  he  seems 
to  do  this  without  taking  thought.  Certainly  he  can 
do  it  without  attracting  our  attention  to  his  technic. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  PLAYS  FROM  PLUTARCH 


It  is  in  the  English  Holinshed  that  Shakspere  finds  the 
facts  for  his  chronicle-plays;  and  it  is  from  the  Greek 
Plutarch  that  he  takes  over  the  figures  which  stand  out 
boldly  in  his  three  Roman  pieces,  *  Julius  Caesar/  '  An- 
tony and  Cleopatra'  and  'Coriolanus.'  These  plays  he 
composes  only  after  he  or  his  contemporaries  had  ex- 
hausted the  gallery  of  English  kings.  For  these  Roman 
dramas  he  has  no  pattern,  such  as  Marlowe's  'Edward  II' 
supplied  him  for  'Richard  II';  and  he  has  no  pre-existing 
piece,  like  the  'Famous  Victories,'  to  be  revised  and  en- 
riched. The  earliest  of  the  plays  he  founds  on  Plutarch 
is  'Julius  Caesar,'  which  seems  to  have  been  written  before 
the  three  somber  comedies  and  before  'Hamlet'  and 
'Othello.'  Chronologically  considered  'Julius  Caesar'  is 
a  connecting  link  between  the  earlier  histories  and  the 
later  tragedies.  Not  only  chronologically  does  'Julius 
Caesar'  lie  between  'Henry  V  and  'Hamlet,'  but  dra- 
maturgically  also.  It  has  a  little  more  formal  symmetry 
of  design  than  the  sprawling  chronicle-plays  that  preceded 
it  and  a  less  obvious  unity  of  theme  than  'Hamlet'  or 
'Macbeth.'  Indeed,  the  movement  of  'Julius  Caesar'  is 
less  straightforward  than  that  of  the  earlier  and  more 
lyrical  'Romeo  and  Juliet';  and  the  later  'Antony  and 
Cleopatra'  is  almost  as  episodic  as  'Henry  V.' 

It  must  remain  always  doubtful  how  far  Shakspere's  art 

254 


THE   PLAYS   FROM  PLUTARCH  255 

as  a  play-maker  is  conscious  and  deliberate.  He  has  never 
chosen  to  take  us  into  his  confidence  and  to  let  us  know 
whether  or  not  he  held  any  definite  theory  of  dramaturgy. 
He  leaves  us  to  deduce  his  principles  from  his  practice. 
He  goes  out  of  his  way  to  discuss  the  art  of  acting;  and 
he  delights  in  drawing  on  the  histrionic  vocabulary  for 
figures  of  speech.  But  as  to  stagecraft  he  is  singularly 
silent.  Where  Ben  Jonson  is  voluble,  Shakspere  is  reti- 
cent. We  are  left  to  conjecture  how  far  he  holds  any 
theories  of  playmaking  of  which  he  is  himself  aware. 
That  he  has  his  own  code  of  principles,  even  if  he  never 
formulated  them  to  himself,  we  cannot  doubt;  and  we  can 
detect  the  motives  which  guide  him,  even  if  we  cannot  be 
sure  that  he  himself  would  always  admit  the  existence  of 
the  rules,  the  results  of  which  we  might  declare.  We  can 
see  that  'Macbeth'  has  an  orderly  and  logical  movement 
of  a  kind  which  we  fail  to  discover  in  'King  John,'  for 
example;  but  it  is  quite  possible  that  to  Shakspere  him- 
self '  Macbeth '  was  after  all  only  a  chronicle-play,  although 
he  has  taken  pains  to  make  it  better  as  a  play  than  any 
of  the  English  histories. 

Even  if  Shakspere  does  not  work  according  to  any  body 
of  doctrine  rigidly  held,  and  even  if  he  might  have  been 
at  a  loss  to  give  a  clear  definition  of  the  type  of  tragedy  to 
which  he  attained  most  completely  in  'Othello,'  a  com- 
parison of  'Hamlet/  'Othello'  and  'Macbeth'  will  reveal 
certain  things  which  these  plays  have  in  common  and 
which  we  may,  therefore,  accept  as  the  dominant  char- 
acteristics of  Shaksperian  tragedy.  These  characteristics 
have  been  singled  out  and  set  in  order  by  Professor  Brad- 
ley. When  Shakspere  is  moved  to  put  forth  his  full 
powers  as  playwright  and  as  poet,  as  psychologist  and  as 
philosopher,  he  sets  before  us  a  tale  of  suffering  and  ca- 


256         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

lamity,  conducting  to  the  death  of  the  hero,  who  is  alwa)^s 
a  conspicuous  person,  prominent  in  the  state.  The  part 
of  the  hero's  career  which  is  shown  in  action  on  the  stage 
is  that  which  more  immediately  precedes  and  leads  up  to 
his  death,  he  having  been  introduced  to  us  at  first  in 
a  fairly  happy  condition.  And  the  later  calamity  and 
suffering  are  unexpected,  exceptional  and  striking.  As  a 
whole,  the  tragedy  brings  home  to  us  an  abiding  sense  of 
"the  powerlessness  of  man,"  and  it  makes  us  feel  that 
the  fatal  end  follows  inevitably  and  inexorably  "from 
the  deeds  of  men,  and  that  the  main  source  of  these 
deeds  is  character. "  The  hero,  who  is  always  of  heroic 
size,  is  destroyed  by  his  own  failing,  which  is  his  ruling 
quality,  at  once  his  strength  and  his  weakness.  He  is 
not  the  victim  of  the  merely  external  forces  against  which 
he  struggles  in  vain;  rather  is  he  betrayed  by  himself. 
He  goes  down  because  he  is  what  he  is.  And,  as  a  result, 
his  downfall  and  death  may  be  pitiful  but  they  are  not 
painful.  We  understand  the  reasons  and  we  are  rec- 
onciled to  the  result.  The  spectacle  of  the  hero's  self- 
destruction  is  not  depressing,  since  there  is  nothing  petty 
in  it  and  nothing  accidental. 

This  definition  of  Shaksperian  tragedy,  rephrased  from 
Professor  Bradley,  completely  covers  'Hamlet,'  'Othello' 
and  'Macbeth.'  It  covers  also  the  three  Roman  plays, 
although  they  lack  the  skilful  structure  of  the  three  trage- 
dies. There  is  less  care  in  the  putting  together  of  'An- 
tony and  Cleopatra,'  and  even  of  'Coriolanus,'  than  there 
is  in  the  framing  of  'Macbeth.'  The  stories  of  the  pieces 
taken  from  Plutarch  may  straggle  like  those  of  the  pieces 
taken  from  Holinshed  and  the  episodes  may  be  as  sporadic; 
but  even  if  the  dramaturgic  method  is  that  of  the  chron- 
icle-plays,  the    spirit   is    that  of  the    greater    tragedies. 


THE   PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  257 

Brutus  and  Antony  and  Coriolanus  are  truly  tragic 
heroes,  of  exceptional  greatness  of  soul,  even  if  the  ac- 
tions in  which  they  severally  appear  are  not  carefully 
knit  and  knotted  into  compelling  symmetry.  Like  most 
of  the  English  histories  the  Roman  plays  are  theatrically 
effective  only  at  intervals.  Even  if  they  have  a  less 
sluggish  movement  than  the  chronicle-plays,  they  have  a 
more  sharply  defined  struggle,  partly  individual  and  in- 
deed internal,  but  also  partly  national,  and  in  two  of  the 
three,  almost  international. 

Shakspere  deals  with  Plutarch  as  liberally  as  he  had 
dealt  with  Holinshed.  He  finds  in  his  source  a  story,  with 
characters  vigorous  and  contrasting.  He  borrows  mo- 
tive, movement  and  color — even  local  color,  although  he 
never  goes  out  of  his  way  in  search  of  this.  He  gets  far 
more  from  the  Greek  portrait-painter  than  from  the  Eng- 
lish annalist,  because  Plutarch  supplies  him  with  far  more 
suggestions  of  the  kind  he  can  utilize,  since  the  old  phi- 
losopher, although  he  wrote  in  prose,  was  also  a  poet. 
Shakspere  transposes,  he  condenses,  he  heightens;  but 
he  rarely  contradicts  Plutarch,  as  he  had  unhesitatingly 
contradicted  Holinshed.  He  takes  over  the  succession 
of  events,  but  he  hurries  the  time;  and  in  the  plays  he 
makes  things  happen  in  close  connection,  one  with  an- 
other, which  were  historically  separated  by  weeks  and 
even  by  months. 

Frequently  Shakspere  carries  over  into  his  dialogue  the 
actual  phrase  which  he  found  in  the  English  rendering 
(more  often  in  'Julius  Caesar'  than  in  the  two  others); 
and  thus  he  is  helped  by  the  translation  itself.  The  style 
of  Plutarch  is  a  little  sophisticated,  as  was  natural  enough 
in  a  Greek  of  the  first  century.  Amyot  had  simplified  it 
in  his  French  version;  and  North's  English  has  an  even 


258         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

larger  freedom.  The  English  translation  has  a  homespun 
style,  almost  slangy  in  its  verbal  picturesqueness;  and 
Shakspere  is  quick  to  profit  by  North's  racy  vernacular. 
But  while  Shakspere  assimilates  not  only  the  language  of 
North,  but  also  the  information  supplied  to  him  by  Plu- 
tarch, he  makes  no  futile  effort  for  historic  accuracy.  He 
was  no  dry-as-dust  antiquary,  no  historical  novelist,  to 
try  to  step  off  his  own  shadow  in  the  vain  effort  to  grasp 
the  local  color  of  a  foreign  and  forgotten  civilization.  He 
lets  a  clock  strike  thrice;  he  bestows  Elizabethan  hats 
and  cloaks  on  his  Romans;  and  he  talks  of  a  Latin  poet's 
rimes.  In  his  manners  and  customs  Shakspere  does  not 
depart  from  the  knowledge  of  his  own  countrymen  and  his 
own  contemporaries,  who  made  up  the  audiences  at  the 
Globe.  He  sees  no  advantage  in  trying  to  recapture  the 
habits  and  usages  of  any  other  place.  His  Roman  mobs 
in  'Julius  Caesar'  and  in  'Coriolanus'  are  as  English  as 
the  Dogberry  who  lived  in  Sicily  or  the  Bottom  who  lived 
in  Athens.  What  he  wants  to  do  and  what  he  has  no 
difficulty  in  doing  is  not  to  make  the  mobs  Roman,  but 
to  make  them  really  mobs,  composed  of  living  human 
beings,  having  in  their  veins  ruddy  drops  of  human 
blood. 

II 

Of  the  three  Roman  plays  'Julius  Caesar'  has  always 
been  the  most  popular  in  the  theater,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  it  has  no  love-interest  and  that  the  two  women  who 
figure  in  it  are  relatively  unimportant.  It  is  also  devoid 
of  humorous  scenes  and  of  humorous  characters;  it  has  no 
Osric  and  no  Gravedigger,  no  Porter  to  grumble  before  he 
answers  the  knocking  at  the  gate;  it  has  no  "clown"  cor- 
responding to  the  countryman  who  brings  the  asp  to  Cleo- 


THE   PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  259 

patra  and  who  extorts  a  laugh  or  two  by  his  comic  sim- 
plicity. It  has  not  the  ingenuity  of  intrigue,  which  sus- 
tains '  Romeo  and  Juliet '  and  '  Othello ' ;  intrigue,  it  may  be 
noted,  tends  to  be  exacting  and  to  be  sufficient  unto  itself, 
as  we  see  in  that  master  of  dramaturgy,  Scribe,  in  whose 
plays  plot  is  so  important  that  there  is  no  room  left  for 
character.  It  has  no  villain  to  stand  over  against  the 
hero.  Cassius,  it  is  evident,  was  cast  to  the  actor  of 
heavy  parts  (probably  the  performer  of  Claudius  and 
Iago),  as  Brutus  must  have  been  undertaken  by  Burbage, 
and  Mark  Antony  by  the  impersonator  of  Cassio  and 
Laertes. 

None  the  less  is  'Julius  Caesar'  a  most  effective  stage- 
play,  with  a  vast  theme  and  a  world-wide  background, 
with  characters  strong  of  volition  and  knowing  their  own 
minds,  with  abundant  oratory  and  with  a  succession  of 
striking  episodes  all  integral  to  the  story.  It  has  also 
a  constantly  recurring  spectacular  accompaniment — the 
games,  the  storm  at  night,  the  open  assassination,  the 
funeral,  the  riot,  the  final  battle  preceded  by  the  appear- 
ance of  the  ghost.  The  play  is  a  bold  portrayal  of  a  dark 
conspiracy  with  its  immediate  success  and  with  the  neces- 
sary consequences  of  that  unfortunate  success.  It  con- 
tains the  essential  dramatic  elements  of  contrast,  conflict 
and  suspense.  It  deals  with  ambition,  perhaps  the  noblest 
of  the  passions — and  assuredly  the  most  dramatic,  since 
it  implies  a  desire  of  power  and  authority,  and  since  it  is 
fundamentally  wilful.  It  has  a  superb  exposition,  pic- 
turesque in  itself  and  at  once  setting  before  us  the  state  of 
affairs  in  Rome  at  the  time,  and  making  us  familiar  with 
the  unstable  opinions  of  the  populace.  This  exposition 
brings  us  into  the  murky  atmosphere  of  a  treacherous  plot, 
and  it  arouses  the  emotion  of  doubt,  of  dread,  and  of 


26o        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

impending  doom.  Although  Brutus  may  be  the  tragic 
hero,  the  play  takes  its  title  from  Caesar,  perhaps  be- 
cause his  name  was  the  most  known,  therefore  the  most 
attractive  to  the  playgoer,  and  perhaps  because  a  chron- 
icle-play was  always  called  after  the  sovran,  although 
his  part  might  not  be  the  most  significant.  But  it  is  to  be 
said  that  even  if  Caesar  is  killed  in  the  middle  of  the  piece, 
his  ghost  returns  toward  the  end,  and  his  spirit  dominates 
long  after  his  body  is  burnt.  Caesarism  is  at  the  core  of 
the  piece;  and  the  acts  that  follow  his  assassination  reveal 
the  need  of  a  firm  hand  like  his  to  guide  the  ship  of  state. 
We  have  here  the  same  political  moral  that  we  discover 
in  the  earlier  English  chronicle-plays — that  power  must 
be  lodged  somewhere  or  else  there  is  chaos  in  the  govern- 
ment and  disaster  for  everybody.  It  is  the  dead  Caesar 
who  overcomes  Brutus  and  Cassius  at  last.  Men  cannot 
fight  with  ghosts;  and  in  the  end  the  victory  is  with  Caesar, 
even  if  he  died  long  before  the  end  came.  The  piece  is 
thus  seen  to  depart  from  the  looser  construction  of  the 
chronicle-play  and  to  approach  the  more  dramatic  method 
of  the  murder-and-revenge  play,  with  its  customary 
ghost,  a  tangible  specter  returning  to  gloat  over  his  im- 
pending vengeance  and  to  make  that  vengeance  securer 
by  his  reappearance. 

' Julius  Caesar'  reveals  a  development  of  Shakspere's 
political  sagacity.  It  is  the  most  significant  play  he  wrote 
between  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  and  'Hamlet.'  When  we 
compare  it  with  the  earlier  tragedy  of  unhappy  love,  we 
cannot  fail  to  see  that  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  was  the  work 
of  a  young  man,  whereas  'Julius  Caesar'  discloses  a 
maturer  vision  of  life  and  a  larger  insight.  It  is  ripe  and 
mellow,  rich  and  wise,  probable  and  plausible.  It  dis- 
plays a  practical  sense  of  affairs  which  few  of  his  earlier 


THE   PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  261 

pieces  had  led  us  to  expect.  As  an  Englishman,  living 
under  Elizabeth,  Shakspere  could  appreciate  Roman  con- 
ditions far  better  than  Greek.  In  'Troilus  and  Cressida' 
he  is  at  sea,  whereas  in  ' Julius  Caesar'  his  foot  is  firm  on 
the  land.  He  may  not  sympathetically  apprehend  Achil- 
les and  Agamemnon,  but  he  understands  Brutus  and 
Cassius.  The  Latin  characters  and  their  statecraft  he 
could  appreciate  by  virtue  of  his  own  Englishry,  even 
if  the  greater  Greeks  were  beyond  his  ken. 

Shakspere  always  takes  care  of  his  actors,  providing 
them  with  histrionic  opportunities;  but  never  has  he  done 
this  more  openly  and  more  skilfully  than  in  *  Julius  Caesar.' 
He  here  supplies  in  abundance  the  kind  of  speech  the 
actor  always  delights  in.  Passage  after  passage,  even  the 
casual  utterances  of  the  less  important  parts,  lends  itself 
to  declamation  independent  of  the  context.  But  no  one 
of  them  is  extraneous  to  the  action — no  one  of  them  is  an 
excursus  existing  for  its  own  sake.  These  speeches  are 
never  merely  rhetorical  declamations,  because  they  all 
serve  a  dramatic  purpose.  Since  this  is  a  story  of  state- 
craft in  a  country  of  trained  speakers,  who  were  orators 
as  they  were  soldiers,  if  not  by  profession  at  least  by  com- 
pulsion of  circumstance,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  play 
contains  more  oratory  than  any  other  of  Shakspere's 
pieces.  A  political  play  imperatively  demands  the  orator 
to  expound  its  motives.  The  set  speeches  in  'Julius 
Caesar'  belong  properly  to  a  play  of  conspiracy  in  a  time 
of  turmoil,  when  the  republic  was  on  its  death-bed. 

The  contrast  between  the  funeral  speeches  of  Brutus 
and  Mark  Antony  makes  evident  Shakspere's  command  of 
both  statecraft  and  stagecraft.  Each  of  them  is  exactly 
what  that  character  would  then  have  made;  each  is  excel- 
lent in  itself,  and  each  reveals  at  once  the  strength  and 


262         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  weakness  of  the  speaker  who  makes  it.  Brutus  is  a 
vain  man,  of  a  large  nobility  of  soul  in  spite  of  his  conceit; 
he  is  an  impractical  idealist,  with  a  close  kinship  to  many 
of  the  professional  reformers  of  our  own  day,  in  that  he  is 
amazingly  self-centered,  in  that  he  always  takes  himself 
too  seriously,  and  in  that  he  lacks  the  saving  sense  of 
humor  that  springs  from  an  understanding  of  his  fellow- 
man.  His  address  is  the  work  of  a  trained  rhetorician; 
it  is  logical  and  chilly;  it  is  directed  to  the  intellect  of  his 
hearers  and  not  to  their  emotions;  it  is  egotistic,  not  to 
call  it  pedantic;  and  it  displays  a  complacent  ignorance  of 
the  psychology  of  the  crowd.  It  shows  that  he  had  failed 
to  profit  by  his  frequent  opportunities  to  understand  the 
temper  of  his  fellow-citizens.  It  is  proof  positive  of  his 
lack  of  political  wisdom,  and  of  his  unfitness  for  the  part 
he  was  playing.  He  says  the  things  he  ought  not  to  have 
said  and  he  leaves  unsaid  the  things  he  ought  to  have  said. 
On  the  other  hand,  Mark  Antony's  address  is  a  model 
stump  speech.  It  is  swift  and  fiery;  it  appeals  to  imag- 
ination and  to  passion.  It  is  not  a  mere  rhetorical  exer- 
cise, but  a  masterpiece  of  persuasion,  aimed  to  accomplish 
a  definite  purpose.  Mark  Antony  has  all  the  arts  of  the 
supple  rhetorician,  including  that  of  deprecating  his  own 
gifts  as  an  orator  in  comparison  with  those  of  Brutus. 
The  psychology  of  the  crowd  that  his  predecessor  ignored 
or  was  ignorant  of  Mark  Antony  understands  and  applies. 
He  is  sincere  in  his  affection  for  his  dead  friend,  yet  he 
uses  that  very  devotion  as  an  element  of  persuasion.  He 
is  cunning,  sinuous,  resourceful;  and  he  plays  on  the  pas- 
sions of  his  hearers,  that  he  may  at  once  avenge  Caesar's 
death  and  profit  by  it.  Surpassingly  clever  the  speech  is 
in  itself,  and  intensely  dramatic  in  the  use  to  which  Shak- 
spere  puts  it. 


THE  PLAYS   FROM  PLUTARCH  263 

The  Forum  scene  is  the  turning-point  of  the  play,  and 
it  must  be  admitted  that  the  interest  flags  a  little  in  the 
ensuing  act,  as  it  does  more  than  once  in  the  correspond- 
ing moments  in  others  of  Shakspere's  tragedies.  Yet  in 
sheer  power  of  presenting  character  at  the  moment  of 
highest  tension  the  quarrel-scene  between  Brutus  and 
Cassius  is  not  inferior  to  anything  else  that  Shakspere  has 
given  us.  Mark  Antony's  address  in  the  Forum  is  Shak- 
spere's  own,  supported  by  only  a  fact  or  two  from  Plu- 
tarch; whereas  the  quarrel-scene  is  made  up  of  stray  sug- 
gestions supplied  here  and  there  by  Plutarch,  but  fused 
and  welded  by  Shakspere's  interpretative  imagination. 
It  is  in  this  scene  with  Cassius  that  Brutus  most  amply 
discloses  the  defects  of  his  character,  his  touchiness  of 
temper  as  obvious  as  the  same  failing  in  Cassius,  his  self- 
sufficient  self-satisfaction,  his  consequent  inability  to  get 
on  with  men,  and  to  get  things  done,  and  to  make  the 
best  of  things  as  they  may  chance  to  be.  It  may  be 
said  of  him,  as  it  was  said  of  an  English  statesman  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  that  "he  was  a  good  man  in  the  worst 
sense  of  the  word."  He  abounds  in  conscious  rectitude. 
He  is  an  impractical  politician,  a  theorist  of  government, 
with  the  loftiest  ideals,  which  he  cannot  disentangle  from 
his  own  ambitions.  It  needed  all  Shakspere's  power  to 
dare  this  frank  delineation  of  the  less  amiable  traits  of 
his  tragic  hero,  and  to  succeed  in  making  us  accept  him 
as  large  enough,  in  spite  of  these  deficiencies,  to  justify 
his  position  in  the  play.  Pettily  pedantic  Brutus  may  be 
at  moments,  yet  he  is  massive  of  soul,  and  he  towers  aloft 
above  the  other  characters,  as  a  tragic  hero  should,  larger 
in  mold  than  anv  of  them. 


264        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


III 

'Julius  Caesar'  was  pretty  certainly  written  before 
'Hamlet/  and  'Antony  and  Cleopatra'  was  apparently 
not  composed  until  after  'Macbeth.'  'Antony  and  Cle- 
opatra' has  the  lofty  elevation  and  the  imaginative 
energy  of  the  tragedies  of  Shakspere's  maturity;  but  it 
has  all  the  laxity  of  form  which  we  find  in  the  chronicle- 
plays  of  his  youth.  It  has  unity  of  theme  without  unity 
of  structure.  It  is  the  longest  of  all  Shakspere's  plays, 
and  it  drags  languidly  in  the  third  and  fourth  of  the  acts 
into  which  our  modern  editions  divide  it.  In  these  texts 
the  play  is  made  to  appear  even  more  disjointed  than  it 
is  because  it  has  been  needlessly  snippeted  into  brief 
scenes  by  the  unfortunate  zeal  of  unenlightened  editors 
who  did  not  realize  the  conditions  of  the  Elizabethan 
stage.  But  even  if  we  disregard  these  misleading  devices 
as  far  as  may  be,  our  interest  is  still  distracted  by  the 
frequent  shiftings  of  locality — more  than  a  score  in  these 
two  acts.  With  characteristic  obtuseness  Doctor  John- 
son asserted  that  "the  power  of  delighting  is  derived 
principally  from  the  frequent  changes  of  scene."  The 
fact  is  that  Shakspere  here  loses  his  subject  in  a  het- 
erogeny  of  episodes,  and  the  action  moves  in  a  choppy 
sea,  if  indeed  it  can  be  said  really  to  advance  at  all;  rather 
does  it  revolve,  turning  on  itself.  The  defeat  at  Actium 
is  in  the  third  act,  and  the  death  of  Antony  in  the  fourth. 
The  current  of  the  story  does  not  flow  in  a  broad  stream 
sweeping  all  before  it;  it  meanders  away  through  several 
mouths.  Things  seem  merely  to  happen  rather  than  to  be 
caused  by  the  persons,  and  as  a  result  the  play  as  a  play 
appears  to  lack  a  controlling  purpose.     When  tested  by 


THE   PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  265 

any  strict  standard,  either  ancient  or  modern,  it  is  not  a 
well-built  drama. 

Possibly  this  is  the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  it  made 
little  impression  upon  Shakspere's  contemporaries,  a  fact 
established  by  the  absence  of  allusions  to  the  play  or  of 
quotations  from  it  in  the  writings  of  the  time.  And  it 
has  never  been  able  to  win  any  protracted  popularity  in 
the  playhouses  of  to-day.  It  is  revived  from  time  to 
time  in  the  modern  theater  by  managers  and  by  actors, 
tempted  by  its  many  opportunities,  both  histrionic  and 
spectacular;  and  it  is  always  discovered  to  be  more  or 
less  disappointing  to  the  audiences,  who  had  naturally 
supposed  that  what  was  powerfully  moving  in  the  reading 
would  be  even  more  delightful  in  the  performance.  This 
experience  may  be  taken  as  evidence  that  here,  for  once, 
is  a  piece  of  Shakspere's  which  is  less  effective  on  the 
stage  than  in  the  study;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  a  piece  in 
which  the  poet  and  the  psychologist,  who  were  united  in 
Shakspere,  have  not  been  properly  supported  by  the  play- 
wright, who  must  always  bear  the  main  burden  in  the 
theater  itself. 

When  we  ask  ourselves  why  a  play  which  Coleridge 
held  to  be  a  powerful  rival  of  ' Hamlet'  and  of  'Macbeth' 
should  not  rivet  the  interest  of  the  audience  as  these  two 
great  tragedies  have  ever  done,  the  first  explanation  which 
suggests  itself  is  that  the  Mark  Antony  of  'Antony  and 
Cleopatra'  is  not  the  Mark  Antony  of  'Julius  Caesar.' 
This  difference  is  not  due  solely  to  the  circumstance  that 
he  is  older.  The  change  is  brought  about  necessarily  by 
the  fact  that  he  is  now  a  character  in  another  play  having 
another  color.  In  any  drama  of  real  value  the  story  must 
be  what  the  characters  make  it;  but  none  the  less  can  the 
characters  be  only  what  the  story  allows.     If  a  character 


266         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

is  taken  out  of  one  play  and  put  into  another  with  not 
only  different  incidents,  but  also  a  different  tone  and  tem- 
per, the  figure  thus  carried  over  is  subjected  to  a  sea- 
change.  Even  if  he  remains  fundamentally  the  same  he 
can  now  exhibit  only  those  traits  which  are  permitted  in 
the  later  drama.  Already  have  we  seen  that  the  Falstaff 
and  the  Mrs.  Quickly  of  the  ' Merry  Wives'  are  not  quite 
the  Falstaff  and  not  at  all  the  Mrs.  Quickly  of  'Henry  IV.' 
So  the  Creon  of  the  'Antigone'  is  not  the  Creon  of  '(Edi- 
pus  the  King.' 

Now,  the  Antony  of  'Julius  Caesar'  is  a  truly  dramatic 
personality,  in  that  he  abounds  in  volition.  He  knows  his 
own  mind  and  he  goes  straight  for  what  he  wants  without 
hesitation  or  delay.  He  has  the  frank  directness  of  will 
which  always  arouses  and  retains  the  interest  of  an  audi- 
ence. But  the  Antony  of  'Antony  and  Cleopatra'  is  in- 
firm of  purpose;  he  wavers  and  he  falters;  he  sets  out  on 
an  enterprise  and  then  turns  back  out  of  caprice;  he 
drifts  with  irresolution.  Thus  he  has  ceased  to  be  the 
truly  dramatic  personality  which  he  was  in  'Julius 
Caesar' — that  is  to  say,  he  is  less  dramatic  on  the  stage 
itself,  in  the  actual  theater  before  the  massed  spectators, 
even  if  he  may  be,  as  indeed  he  is,  more  complex  and 
more  interesting  when  we  are  alone  with  him  in  the 
study.  Here,  very  likely,  is  the  fatal  dramaturgic  de- 
fect of  the  tragedy  as  an  acted  play.  Captivated  by  the 
charm  of  the  historic  situation,  Shakspere  neglects  to 
find  some  way  of  bestowing  upon  his  hero  that  firm  de- 
termination which  appears  to  be  imperative  in  the  chief 
figure  of  a  play  that  is  to  please  long  and  please  many  in 
the  playhouse  itself. 

This  special  defect  of  Shakspere's  tragedy,  considered 
solely  as  a  stage-play,  is  not  to  be  found  in  Dryden's  re- 


THE   PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  267 

handling  of  the  same  theme.  In  'All  for  Love,  or  The 
World  Well  Lost,'  Antony  may  lack  the  largeness  and  the 
majesty  of  Shakspere's  hero,  but  he  is  less  vacillating  and 
he  moves  more  directly  to  his  doom.  Dryden,  it  must  be 
noted  also,  has  concentrated  his  action;  and  Scott  is  justi- 
fied in  his  opinion  that  the  plan  of  Dryden's  play  is  to  be 
preferred  to  that  of  Shakspere  in  "coherence  and  sim- 
plicity." That  'All  for  Love'  kept  the  stage  for  a  century 
is  evidence  in  behalf  of  the  soundness  of  Scott's  opinion. 
Yet  it  is  strange  that  Dryden  should  for  once  have  suc- 
ceeded where  Shakspere  was  less  successful,  since  he  was 
not  a  born  playwright,  but  rather  a  poet  who  made  plays 
against  the  grain,  whereas  Shakspere  was  a  playwright  by 
native  gift.  'All  for  Love'  is  Dryden's  best  drama,  be- 
yond all  question;  but,  except  in  its  planning,  it  is  a  poor 
thing  by  the  side  of  Shakspere's,  as  Scott  has  frankly 
admitted. 

The  strength  of  'Antony  and  Cleopatra'  lies  in  the  mar- 
velous truth  with  which  these  two  characters  are  pre- 
sented in  their  fatal  relations  with  each  other.  In  'Julius 
Caesar'  there  is  no  love-scene;  'Antony  and  Cleopatra'  is 
all  love,  and  it  is  a  succession  of  love-scenes.  As  Shak- 
spere had  given  us  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet'  the  tragedy  of 
young  love  triumphant  even  in  death,  so  now  he  gives  us 
the  tragedy  of  sexual  passion  when  it  holds  in  its  unrelent- 
ing grasp  a  man  and  a  woman  of  riper  maturity.  Cleo- 
patra is  not  in  the  first  bloom  of  youth;  she  is  almost 
as  old  as  Balzac's  "woman  of  thirty";  and  Antony  has 
attained  to  what  another  French  writer  has  called  the 
"dangerous  age"  for  a  man  of  amorous  temperament. 
And  Shakspere  presents  them  both  with  uncompromising 
veracity,  extenuating  nothing  and  setting  down  naught  in 
malice,  while  at  the  same  time  he  has  abundant  artistic 


268         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

sympathy  for  his  characters.  He  is  fair  to  both  of  them. 
He  never  disguises  the  disintegrating  results  of  Cleopatra's 
feminine  charm;  but  he  never  shows  her  up  as  Thackeray 
shows  up  his  Becky  Sharp.  Rather  does  he  love  her,  as 
Taine  declares  that  Balzac  loved  his  Madame  Marneffe, 
lavishing  upon  her  an  affectionate  solicitude. 

It  is  not  as  a  Greek  but  as  a  gipsy  that  Shakspere  sees 
Cleopatra,  a  bewitching  enchantress,  mistress  of  every 
art  of  fascination,  all  the  more  dangerous  because  of  her 
experience,  and  making  her  profit  out  of  all  her  previous 
amorous  adventures.  Love  is  her  whole  existence;  and 
this  is  the  last  grand  passion  of  her  life.  She  has  the 
sovran  grace  of  a  queen  and  also  the  undisguised  arts  of  a 
true  courtezan.  Her  voluptuous  coquetry  is  an  incessant 
provocation  to  arouse  desire.  Yet  Shakspere  does  not 
base  her  charm  upon  her  beauty  alone,  or  even  on  her 
infinite  variety  of  amatory  expedient.  Her  appeal  to 
Antony  is  intellectual  as  well  as  sensual;  and  so  is  his 
appeal  to  her.  It  is  the  whole  woman  and  the  whole 
man,  soul  as  well  as  body,  which  draw  them  together. 
Each  has  found  at  last  an  elective  affinity.  Each  was 
made  for  the  other;  and  they  were  fitly  joined.  In  their 
higher  natures,  as  well  as  their  lower,  they  are  paired; 
and  each  drags  the  other  down. 

But  there  can  be  neither  respect  nor  self-respect  in  their 
union;  she  has  been  the  mistress  of  Julius  Caesar  and  of 
the  younger  Pompey,  and  he  has  deserted  two  wives  in  suc- 
cession to  be  the  bond-slave  of  his  adulterous  passion  for 
her.  And  they  do  not  feel  the  need  of  self-respect,  for  they 
are  both  selfish  and  callous,  except  in  their  relations  to 
each  other.  They  obey  their  caprices  of  the  moment  with- 
out scruple  and  without  remorse.  They  have  no  compunc- 
tions and  no  moral  sense.     And  few  of  the  other  charac- 


THE   PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  269 

ters  by  whom  they  are  surrounded  are  any  better  fur- 
nished with  morality.  There  is  little  loyalty  in  any  of 
them,  save  in  Eros  and  in  Cleopatra's  women.  All  is 
demoralization,  degeneracy,  disintegration.  The  motto 
of  every  man  is  "every  man  for  himself";  and  even  Eno- 
barbus  is  found  wanting  at  the  supreme  moment — Enobar- 
bus  who  was  Antony's  trusted  chief  of  staff  and  whom 
Shakspere  employs  on  occasion  as  a  chorus,  as  a  trans- 
mitting medium  to  suggest  to  the  spectators  the  point  of 
view  he  wants  them  to  take.  The  poet  preaches  no  moral 
himself,  but  the  moral  is  there,  none  the  less,  writ  plain  for 
all  to  see.  Whatever  its  dramaturgic  deficiencies,  'Antony 
and  Cleopatra'  is  for  the  mere  reader  what  Coleridge 
called  it,  a  powerful  rival  to  the  mightiest  of  Shakspere's 
tragedies. 

IV 

The  will  power,  which  is  relaxed  in  'Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra,' is  stiffened  in  'Coriolanus.'  The  hero  of  the  latest 
of  the  three  Roman  plays  knows  his  own  mind  and  speaks 
it  freely  and  frequently.  Perhaps  the  weakness  of  voli- 
tion which  we  discover  in  Antony,  and  which  is  a  main 
reason  why  the  play  wherein  he  is  a  leading  figure  has 
never  achieved  a  lasting  popularity  among  playgoers,  is 
unavoidable  in  that  drama,  since  it  is  integral  to  the  his- 
toric fact  represented  in  the  play.  And  the  firmness  of 
volition,  which  is  the  dominating  quality  of  Coriolanus, 
might  be  expected  to  bestow  upon  the  later  piece  the 
attractiveness  in  the  theater  that  'Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra' has  been  found  to  lack.  But  this  it  has  not  done, 
largely  because  Shakspere  has  chosen  to  give  us  a  narra- 
tive in  dialogue  rather  than  a  true  drama.  It  is  the  least 
often  represented  in  the  theater  of  the  three  plays  from 


270         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Plutarch;  indeed,  it  reappears  on  the  stage  only  when  an 
actor  of  overvaulting  ambition  demands  a  histrionic  op- 
portunity. It  has  all  the  looseness  of  the  earlier  chronicle- 
plays  without  the  one  or  more  attractive  personalities 
which  we  find  in  the  English  histories.  And  even  though 
its  story  is  taken  from  a  historian,  it  seems  out  of  nature 
in  its  artificial  arbitrariness.  It  looks  like  a  special  in- 
stance, contradicting  the  result  of  the  average  man's 
observation  of  life. 

We  may  go  further  and  assert  that  the  subject  of  the 
piece  could  be  made  alluring  in  the  theater  only  by  an 
extraordinary  exercise  of  playmaking  skill  in  bestowing 
on  the  play  a  sustaining  intricacy  of  intrigue,  through 
ingenious  elaboration  of  plot  or  through  the  insertion  of  a 
love-interest  so  presented  as  not  to  appear  extraneous. 
This  effort  to  make  the  theme  more  appetizing  Shakspere 
has  not  made.  'Coriolanus'  is  a  one-part  play,  as  was 
'Richard  III';  but  the  Roman  piece  is  without  the  the- 
atric variety  and  the  psychologic  interest  of  the  English 
history.  It  is  intolerably  monotonous  in  its  insistence 
upon  a  single  character,  dominated  by  a  single  unlovely 
characteristic — an  overmastering  pride,  supported  by  an 
inhuman  contempt  for  all  who  do  not  belong  to  his  own 
caste.  Pride  goes  before  a  fall,  and  Coriolanus  sinks  to 
the  infamy  of  becoming  a  traitor  who  takes  command  of 
the  enemies  of  Rome  and  leads  them  victorious  to  her 
walls.  For  this  baseness  he  may  have  provocation  enough, 
but  he  has  no  real  justification,  and  he  admits  himself  that 
his  revenge  on  his  native  city  is  due  to  spite. 

Shakspere  exaggerates  beyond  belief  the  personal  ex- 
ploits of  his  hero.  Coriolanus  is  a  stalwart  fighter,  but  he 
reveals  none  of  the  qualities  of  a  great  general.  He  has 
immense  pride  in  his  own  prowess,  in  the  strength  of  his 


THE  PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  271 

thews;  but  he  is  narrow-minded  and  lacking  in  any  gen- 
uine magnanimity  of  soul.  He  is  ill-balanced  and  over- 
bearing; and  such  a  character  is  too  devoid  of  variety  to 
attract  playgoers,  even  if  it  had  been  exhibited  in  an 
artfully  contrived  plot,  which  'Coriolanus'  has  not. 
Moreover,  the  one  really  dramatic  situation  in  the  story 
that  Shakspere  finds  in  Plutarch — the  surrender  of  Corio- 
lanus  to  the  appeal  of  his  mother  to  spare  the  Rome  which 
has  turned  him  out — even  this  is  not  made  to  yield  its  full 
effect.  It  is  probably  this  situation  which  led  Shakspere 
to  select  the  subject;  and  yet  this  scene  is  not  as  well  done 
as  Shakspere  has  handled  corresponding  situations  in  other 
plays.  The  speech  of  Volumnia  to  Coriolanus  is  a  speci- 
men of  swelling  eloquence,  a  towering  example  of  rhetor- 
ical amplification,  a  big  speech  in  itself,  but  it  is  wanting 
in  heartfelt  sincerity.  A  few  simple  moving  words  would 
have  served  the  purpose  better  than  this  sonorous  oration. 
Although  there  is  no  weakening  here  of  the  poet's  power 
or  of  his  intelligence,  there  seems  to  be  a  slackening  of 
enthusiasm  and  a  consequent  diminution  of  emotional 
appeal. 

To  this  we  may  also  ascribe  the  hardness  of  the  play 
as  a  whole,  its  metallic  brilliancy,  its  repellent  temper. 
The  atmosphere  is  petty  and  the  political  conflict  in  Rome 
is  but  a  paltry  faction  fight.  In  ' Julius  Caesar'  the  clash 
of  the  contending  parties  is  a  struggle  for  imperial  do- 
minion; and  in  'Coriolanus'  it  is  only  an  intramural 
squabble.  In  'Julius  Caesar'  we  have  world-politics,  and 
in  'Coriolanus'  only  ward-politics.  We  do  not  sympa- 
thize with  either  party,  and  plainly  enough  Shakspere 
does  not  mean  us  to  do  so.  He  does  not  take  sides  him- 
self, and  we  do  not.  He  is  impartial,  and  we  have  an 
equal  dislike  for  both  of  the  contending  groups.     The 


272         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

plebeians  are  crass  and  cowardly,  and  the  patricians  are 
cowardl)r  and  incapable.  The  mob  is  as  flighty  and  as 
feather-brained  as  the  mob  in  'Julius  Caesar';  and  the 
fathers  of  the  city  act  rather  as  stepfathers,  selfish  and 
self-seeking.  On  both  sides  there  is  a  plentiful  lack  of 
common  sense  and  of  right  feeling. 

V 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  Shakspere  does  not  exten- 
uate the  hard-hearted  and  cold-blooded  character  of  his 
hero,  the  stupidity  of  the  aristocrats  and  the  folly  of  the 
democrats  who  are  misled  by  a  pair  of  demagogues.  He 
holds  no  brief  for  either  party  or  for  any  character;  and  in 
this  he  discloses  himself  as  truly  a  dramatist.  It  has  been 
maintained  that  he  was  not  a  democrat  himself,  but  an 
aristocrat  rather,  not  to  say  a  snob,  in  his  attitude  toward 
the  plain  people;  and  the  evidence  in  support  of  this  has 
been  derived  partly  from  'Coriolanus,'  partly  from 
'Julius  Caesar'  and  partly  from  the  Jack  Cade  episodes  in 
'Henry  VI.'  It  has  been  urged  that  these  passages,  taken 
collectively,  show  that  Shakspere  had  no  liking  for  the 
populace.  This  assertion  has  a  certain  specious  plausi- 
bility. If  phrases  are  taken  from  the  mouths  of  Shak- 
spere's  characters  and  transferred  to  Shakspere  himself, 
then  there  is  no  difficulty  in  making  up  a  mass  of  deroga- 
tory expressions,  full  of  bitter  contempt  for  the  people. 

But  of  course  this  is  just  what  we  have  no  right  to  do. 
Shakspere  may  not  be  a  democrat,  but  he  is  a  drama- 
tist, and  he  lets  all  his  creatures  express  themselves  in 
their  own  words  and  utter  amply  what  they  may  have  in 
their  own  hearts.  If  these  characters  are  disdainful  aris- 
tocrats, then  he  allows  them  to  express  their  contempt  for 


THE   PLAYS   FROM   PLUTARCH  273 

the  vulgar  herd;  and  there  is  no  justification  for  the 
assumption  that  they  are  serving  at  that  moment  as  the 
mouthpieces  of  Shakspere  himself.  The  dramatic  poet 
differs  from  the  lyric  poet  mainly  in  his  possession  of  the 
power  of  projecting  himself  into  other  personalities  and 
of  keeping  his  own  opinion  to  himself  as  far  as  this  is  pos- 
sible. What  Shakspere  says  in  his  sonnets  and  in  his 
narrative  poems  we  may  accept,  if  we  choose,  as  what  he 
thought  and  felt  as  Shakspere.  But  what  Jack  Cade  or 
Coriolanus  may  say  in  the  plays  wherein  they  appear  is 
what  Jack  Cade  and  Coriolanus  must  say  if  they  are  to 
obey  the  law  of  their  own  being. 

Other  adverse  critics  there  are  who  admit  the  injustice 
of  crediting  Shakspere  with  the  sayings  of  his  characters, 
and  yet  who  urge  that  he  clearly  discloses  his  dislike  for 
the  plain  people  in  the  handling  of  the  several  mob-scenes 
in  which  the  populace  is  presented  as  foolish,  fickle  and 
easily  captivated  by  empty  claptrap.  And  there  is  no 
denying  that  thus  presented  the  charge  has  a  far  firmer 
support,  and  that  it  is  not  to  be  met  by  the  mere  assertion 
of  any  dramatic  necessity  for  so  representing  the  popu- 
lace. When  we  study  the  mob-scenes  we  can  hardly 
escape  the  conviction  that  Shakspere  detested  and  de- 
spised the  mob.  But  who  of  us  does  not — even  to-day 
in  these  democratic  times?  It  is  the  mob  that  Shakspere 
seems  to  despise,  and  not  the  whole  people,  of  which  the 
mob  is  only  a  single  constituent  element  and  the  least 
worthy.  The  mob  is  the  residuum  of  the  populace,  the 
baser  part  in  its  basest  aspects.  It  is  as  dangerous  to-day 
and  as  much  to  be  dreaded  as  it  was  when  Coriolanus 
and  Julius  Caesar  were  alive;  and  Shakspere's  abhorrence 
of  it  is  now  shared  by  all  who  recall  the  Lord  George  Gor- 
don disturbances  in  London,  the  draft  riots  in  New  York, 


274        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  the  inexcusable  excesses  of  the  closing  hours  of  the 
Commune  in  Paris. 

So  far  as  we  can  judge  from  his  plays,  Shakspere  has  the 
universal  toleration  which  comes  from  universal  under- 
standing. He  has  no  liking  for  silly  mobs,  as  he  has  no 
liking  for  bloody  tyrants  or  for  foppish  courtiers.  Rich- 
ard III  and  Macbeth  are  monarchs  whose  dark  natures 
he  makes  us  see  for  ourselves,  as  he  also  exposes  Le  Beau 
and  Osric  in  all  their  empty  pretentiousness.  He  is  not  a 
snob,  nor  is  he  a  sycophant.  He  was  almost  the  only 
poet  who  did  not  come  forward  with  a  dirge  or  an  elegy 
after  the  death  of  Elizabeth.  Yet  it  is  probably  true  that 
he  was  not  a  democrat,  and  that  he  believed  in  a  firm 
rule  for  the  state,  which  in  his  day  meant  a  monarchy. 
And  here  he  was  in  accord  with  the  most  enlightened 
opinion  of  his  own  time  and  of  his  own  country.  So  far 
as  we  can  judge,  he  was  no  political  theorist  anticipat- 
ing the  experiments  of  the  future.  The  poet  may  be  a 
prophet  on  occasion,  it  is  true;  but  a  dramatic  poet  must 
live  in  the  present,  and  he  cannot  proclaim  in  his  plays 
theories  and  speculations  too  far  in  advance  of  the  aver- 
age apprehension  of  the  contemporary  audiences  whose 
tastes  he  has  to  please. 

That  Shakspere  believed  in  the  good  feeling  and  in  the 
intelligent  receptivity  of  the  average  man  is  shown  by  his 
freely  putting  the  best  of  himself  into  his  plays,  meant  for 
the  plain  people.  All  his  poetry  and  all  his  philosophy 
are  lavished  on  that  splendid  succession  of  dramas  de- 
signed to  delight  the  Londoners,  well-bred  and  ill-bred, 
who  crowded  the  Globe  Theater.  When  we  consider 
these  dramas  we  are  compelled  to  credit  Shakspere  with 
intense  human  sympathy,  the  noblest  quality  of  our  mod- 
ern  democratic  movement.     He  may  expose   the   cruel 


THE   PLAYS   FROM  PLUTARCH  275 

king,  he  may  despise  the  trifling  courtier,  he  may  detest 
the  vacillating  mob,  but  he  takes  pleasure  in  putting  into 
his  plays  humble  characters  who  live  their  unobtrusive 
lives  in  all  honesty.  The  most  engaging  figure  in  '  Henry 
V  is  the  frank  soldier  Williams;  and  the  only  fine  char- 
acter in  ' Antony  and  Cleopatra'  is  the  enfranchised  slave 
Eros,  who  slays  himself  when  he  is  called  upon  to  kill  the 
master  he  loves.  There  is  no  gainsaying  Walter  Bage- 
hot's  assertion  that  throughout  all  Shakspere's  plays  we 
"see  an  amazing  sympathy  with  common  people,  rather 
an  excessive  tendency  to  dwell  on  the  common  features  of 
ordinary  lives." 


CHAPTER  XV 
4 KING  LEAR' 


Shelley,  an  admirable  judge  of  poetic  excellence, 
called  'King  Lear'  "the  most  perfect  specimen  of  dra- 
matic poetry  existing  in  the  world."  On  the  other  hand, 
Thackeray,  whose  appreciation  was  limited  rather  to  the 
plausibilities  of  real  life,  once  saw  'King  Lear'  acted,  and 
he  confessed  that  he  found  it  a  bore;  "it  is  almost  blas- 
phemy to  say  that  a  play  of  Shakspere's  is  bad,  but  I  can't 
help  it,  if  I  think  so."  A  large  majority  of  those  most 
competent  to  form  a  just  opinion  are  in  accord  with  Shel- 
ley; and  yet  there  are  not  a  few  who  incline  rather  to 
Thackeray's  severe  judgment.  It  may  not  be  easy  to 
reconcile  these  opposing  views;  but  it  ought  not  to  be 
impossible  to  find  the  explanation  for  their  existence. 

It  seems  likely  that  Shelley,  and  most  of  those  who  are 
enthusiastic  in  eulogy  of  'King  Lear,'  are  judging  it  from 
the  printed  page,  whereas  Thackeray  was  recording  his  im- 
pression after  an  actual  performance  in  the  theater  itself. 
In  general,  it  may  be  maintained  firmly  that  the  plays 
of  any  truly  dramatic  poet,  having  been  composed  with 
an  eye  single  to  the  stage,  produce  their  full  power  only 
in  the  theater  itself.  Charles  Lamb,  with  characteristic 
paradox,  dwelt  on  the  disadvantage  of  seeing  Shakspere's 
noblest  characters  impersonated  even  by  actors  gifted  as 
Kemble  and  Siddons;  yet  he  seems  never  to  have  neglected 
an  opportunity  to  profit  by  these  performances.     George 

276 


'KING  LEAR'  277 

Eliot  was  frank  in  declaring  that  she  liked  to  see  Shak- 
spere's  plays  acted  "better  than  any  others."  It  may  be 
admitted  that  there  are  beauties  in  all  the  masterpieces 
of  the  poetic  drama,  which  disclose  themselves  only  to  the 
solitary  student,  and  that  these  plays  have  a  complex  rich- 
ness which  cannot  be  seized  at  once  by  the  main  body  of 
spectators.  On  the  other  hand,  the  essential  dramatic 
quality  of  any  play  is  best  proved  by  a  performance,  certain 
to  make  clear  the  solidity  of  structure  which  alone  bestows 
enduring  vitality  upon  a  drama.  The  theater  itself  brings 
out  the  bold  masses  and  the  broad  movement,  even  if  the 
library  may  discover  many  felicities  of  phrase  and  subtle- 
ties of  character  delineation  left  in  the  shadow  when  the 
play  is  presented  on  the  stage.  It  is  possible  also  that 
the  poet,  writing  primarily  for  the  playhouse,  may  not 
limit  himself  to  its  conditions,  and  that  he  may  put  into 
his  play  more  than  the  playgoers  could  appreciate.  More 
than  once,  and  especially  in  the  composition  of  'King 
Lear,'  this  appears  to  have  been  the  case  with  Shakspere. 
He  writes  for  the  stage,  of  course,  and  for  the  company 
of  actors  at  the  Globe,  and  for  the  audiences  which  1 
flocked  to  that  theater;  but  sometimes  he  seems  to  get  so 
tremendously  absorbed  in  his  work  that  he  transcends 
the  temporary  and  immediate  needs  of  his  theater,  and  • 
then,  in  Goethe's  fine  phrase,  he  feels  that  "the  whole 
visible  world  is  too  narrow  for  his  mind."  As  a  result 
of  this  outburst  of  imaginative  energy,  the  play  gains  in 
epic  grandeur;  but  it  suffers  also  in  that  it  is  charged  with 
a  message  too  mighty  for  it. 

It  needs  to  be  noted  yet  once  again  that  Shakspere  fits 
his  play  to  his  own  theater  and  to  its  conditions,  and  that 
these  are  not  the  conditions  of  the  theaters  in  which  '  King 
Lear'  may  be  acted  to-day.    His  stage  was  unencumbered 


278         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

with  scenery  and  its  devices  for  creating  illusion  were  few 
and  simple.  He  calls  up  before  the  spectators  the  vision 
of  Dover  Cliff  or  of  the  desolate  heath  with  its  pelting 
storm  by  the  sheer  poetry  of  the  speeches  he  puts  into  the 
mouths  of  his  characters.  The  modern  playgoer  expects 
and  demands  that  the  scene-painters  shall  realize  these 
places  for  him  and  that  the  stage-managers  shall  frighten 
his  ears  with  the  roar  of  the  tempest.  Whether  the  six- 
teenth-century stage  was  inferior  or  superior  to  that  of 
the  twentieth  century  is  a  question  that  calls  for  no  dis- 
cussion here;  assuredly  they  were  different.  Their  meth- 
ods were  not  the  same  and  the  possibilities  of  the  Tudor 
theater  were  other  than  those  of  our  snug  modern  play- 
houses with  their  realistic  scenery  and  their  multiplied 
ingenuities  of  stage-management.  The  theater  for  which 
Shakspere  composed  his  plays  and  to  the  conditions  of 
which  he  adjusted  them  was  the  Elizabethan  theater, 
not  the  Victorian;  and  all  his  plays  need  to  be  rearranged 
and  at  times  even  mangled,  if  they  are  now  to  be  per- 
formed. They  all  gain  by  any  performance,  since  it  is 
for  performance  that  they  were  planned;  but  they  all  lose 
by  this  readjustment — and  no  one  of  them  loses  more 
than  '  King  Lear.'  Its  sublimity,  which  stood  out  stark 
upon  the  bare  Elizabethan  stage,  is  sadly  diminished,  not 
to  say  obscured,  by  the  elaborate  scenery,  the  com- 
plicated trappings  and  the  multitudinous  effects  with 
which  it  is  perforce  represented  to-day.  And  in  our 
theaters  it  is  difficult  not  to  feel  that  'King  Lear'  is  a 
little  out  of  place  and  that  it  cannot  really  be  refashioned 
to  suit  conditions  wholly  unlike  those  in  accord  with 
which  it  came  into  being.  Furthermore,  it  makes  ex- 
traordinary demands  upon  its  actors — demands  which 
can  very  rarely  be  met  now,  even  if  they  were  met  by 


'KING  LEAR'  279 

Shakspere's  own  company.  More  easily  than  any  other 
of  his  plays  can  it  be  betrayed  by  the  performers;  and 
this  may  have  been  the  case  when  Thackeray  saw  it. 

Here,  then,  is  one  explanation  for  the  divergence  of 
opinion  about  this  play.  When  Shelley  praised  it  as  a 
masterpiece  of  dramatic  poetry,  he  had  visualized  it  by 
dint  of  imagination  in  an  ideal  performance,  and  he  was 
not  drawing  on  his  memory  of  any  disenchanting  repre- 
sentation; whereas  Thackeray  may  have  been  discouraged 
by  the  inadequacy  and  the  incongruity  of  the  performance 
he  had  witnessed.  And  it  is  to  be  remembered  also  that 
in  reading  our  minds  are  attuned  to  the  poetry  and  we 
give  a  more  languid  attention  to  the  action,  to  the  plot, 
to  the  story  itself — factors  vividly  impressed  upon  us  by 
any  representation  before  our  eyes.  Now  'King  Lear'  is 
as  Elizabethan  in  its  story  as  it  is  Elizabethan  in  its  the- 
atrical form.  When  we  see  it  acted  the  lack  of  plausi- 
bility is  brought  home  to  us,  the  unreality  of  the  action, 
the  medieval  remoteness  of  the  theme  and  the  absence  of 
any  intimate  relation  to  the  facts  of  ordinary  life  as  we 
know  them  for  ourselves  by  every-day  observation.  King 
Lear  himself  is  too  special  a  character,  too  high-strung, 
too  ranting  in  his  explosive  violence,  for  us  to  accept 
easily  when  we  see  him  in  the  flesh  before  us;  and  the 
motives  which  govern  him  seem  to  us  strained  and  ex- 
aggerated. To  many  of  us  nowadays  Lear's  insanity  is 
intensely  painful,  not  to  say  repulsive;  and  we  incline  to 
the  belief  that  madness  lies  outside  the  proper  limita- 
tions of  dramatic  art  and  that  it  unfits  a  tragic  hero  for 
his  function. 

The  story  itself,  the  test  of  his  three  daughters,  is  not 
more  medieval  than  the  test  of  the  three  caskets  in  the 
'Merchant  of  Venice';  but  in  the  comedy  this  absurdity 


28o        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

is  incidental  only,  whereas  in  the  tragedy  it  is  funda- 
mental. When  we  see  the  comedy  we  are  willing  enough 
to  make  believe  with  the  author,  since  the  play  is  a 
comedy  and  its  end  is  a  foreordained  happiness  in  matri- 
mony. When  we  see  the  tragedy  we  discover  that  the 
misunderstanding  of  Lear  and  Cordelia  is  the  corner- 
stone of  an  edifice  of  appalling  and  unutterable  woe. 
For  this  towering  tragedy  the  initial  myth  is  too  fragile 
for  our  modern  insistence  upon  the  probable  and  the 
plausible;  and  we  are  not  so  ready  to  make  believe. 
In  the  library  we  are  more  willing  to  accept  the  improb- 
able than  in  the  theater,  because  this  does  not  call  at- 
tention to  itself  with  insistent  sharpness.  Shakspere  was 
most  fortunate  in  happening  upon  the  old  play  of '  Ham- 
let/ with  its  perennial  appeal,  just  when  he  was  ready  to 
handle  its  theme  with  the  utmost  dramaturgic  dexterity 
and  to  impart  to  it  a  deep  philosophic  significance;  and 
it  may  be  that  he  was  less  fortunate  in  taking  up  the  old 
play  of  '  King  Leir,'  with  all  its  unacceptable  artificiality 
of  story  and  with  all  its  extreme  fury  of  passion,  at  the 
moment  when  his  power  as  a  poet  was  at  its  ripest 
maturity  and  when  he  was  capable  of  attaining  the 
summit  of  sublimity. 


II 

The  old  play  which  Shakspere  made  over  into  'Hamlet* 
is  lost.  The  old  play  which  he  made  over  into  'King 
Lear'  has  survived;  and  we  can  see  for  ourselves  what  he 
took  over,  what  he  left  out  and  what  he  added.  The 
earlier  'King  Leir'  is  a  crude  piece  of  work,  devoid  of 
depth  and  barren  of  poetry,  and  yet  not  without  a  cer- 
tain purely  theatrical  effectiveness.     Shakspere  follows  its 


'KING  LEAR'  281 

main  lines  and  he  finds  in  it  his  plot:  the  relation  of  Lear 
to  his  three  daughters.  He  does  not  conform  to  the  plan 
of  the  earlier  playwright,  altering  unhesitatingly  as  he 
sees  fit,  and  killing  off  Cordelia,  who  had  been  spared  by 
his  predecessor.  He  adds  matter  suggested  by  several 
other  sources,  deriving  from  a  story  in  Sidney's  'Arcadia' 
his  subplot,  the  relation  of  Gloster  to  his  two  sons,  which 
he  employs  as  a  parallel  to  the  relation  of  Lear  and  his 
three  daughters. 

This  subplot  is  tied  into  the  main  plot  with  a  careful 
skill  which  he  did  not  always  exhibit  when  he  put  two 
separate  stories  into  one  play.  Indeed,  so  far  as  its 
earlier  acts  are  concerned,  'King  Lear'  is  one  of  the  most 
skilfully  constructed  of  all  his  dramas.  The  two  stories 
are  intricately  interwoven,  and  each  of  them  is  made  to 
reinforce  the  other.  The  plot  as  a  whole  is  elaborate  and 
complicated,  yet  it  is  coherent  and  perfectly  clear  to  the 
spectator.  The  exposition  is  swift  and  arouses  expectancy 
for  the  events  that  are  to  follow.  The  action  tightens 
immediately  and  it  hurries  unresting  toward  the  dimly 
foreseen  doom  which  lowers  above  all  the  characters  from 
the  beginning.  In  the  first  half  of  the  play  the  movement 
is  direct,  and  in  fact  it  does  not  flag  until  the  fourth  act, 
where  we  observe  the  slacking  of  interest  and  the  con- 
fusion of  aim  which  so  often  characterize  this  portion  of 
an  Elizabethan  play.  Here  the  story  wavers  for  a  while 
and  the  interest  is  almost  dispersed  among  the  less  impor- 
tant persons  instead  of  pressing  forward  with  a  crescendo 
of  intensity.  Even  in  the  final  act,  when  we  are  eager  to 
follow  the  fate  of  Lear  himself,  our  attention  is  distracted 
by  the  prolonged  episode  of  the  challenge  and  duel  of 
Edgar  and  Edmund.  Quite  possibly  Shakspere  is  seek- 
ing to  repeat  here  the  effect  he  had  got  out  of  the  fencing- 


282         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

match  in  the  final  act  of  'Hamlet/  overlooking  the  fact 
that  this  rivets  our  attention  because  Hamlet  is  one  of  the 
participants,  whereas  Edgar  and  Edmund  usurp  the  stage 
and  thrust  Lear  out  into  the  cold.  And  even  the  death 
of  Cordelia  is  the  result  almost  of  an  accident,  or  at  least 
it  would  not  have  occurred  if  Edmund  had  been  moved 
a  little  earlier  to  recall  his  order  for  her  murder. 

While  the  construction,  highly  expert  in  the  earlier 
parts  of  the  play,  is  less  praiseworthy  in  the  later  portions, 
all  other  necessary  element  of  dramaturgy  is  maintained 
throughout.  The  characters  are  vigorously  contrasted, 
the  good  against  the  bad;  and  they  fall  into  two  contend- 
ing groups,  those  who  love  and  those  who  hate.  They 
are  all  fundamentally  dramatic  in  that  they  are  amply 
dowered  with  volition,  even  the  gentle  Cordelia  knowing 
her  own  mind  and  speaking  it  on  occasion.  This  is  made 
plainer  to  us  by  the  care  with  which  Shakspere  has  unified 
the  action  of  the  older  piece  at  the  very  moment  when  he 
was  complicating  the  plot  by  adding  the  story  of  Gloster 
and  his  two  sons,  one  good  and  one  bad,  to  the  story  of 
Lear  and  his  three  daughters,  one  good  and  two  bad.  He 
confines  the  action  to  Britain  and  he  reduces  the  number 
of  separate  places  where  the  several  episodes  are  supposed 
to  occur.  Moreover,  he  cuts  down  the  time  which  is 
required  for  the  story  to  reach  its  fatal  end,  rushing  us  to 
that  conclusion  breathlessly. 

The  most  important  modification  which  Shakspere  made 
when  he  worked  over  the  old  piece  is  in  the  reconception 
of  Lear  himself.  In  the  earlier  play  the  aged  king  does 
not  go  mad  and  there  is  no  storm.  It  is  by  the  three 
successive  storm-scenes  that  Shakspere  accentuates  the 
poignant  pathos  of  the  stricken  monarch's  situation.  And 
there  is  nothing  in  the  whole  range  of  the  drama  compa- 


'KING  LEAR'  283 

rable  with  the  marvelous  meeting  at  night  on  a  barren 
heath  under  the  raging  tempest  of  the  mad  king  with  the 
fool  and  with  the  man  who  is  assuming  madness.  Nor 
is  there  anything  in  the  earlier  play  presaging  this  awe- 
inspiring  scene;  the  sublimity  of  this  is  Shakspere's  and 
Shakspere's  alone. 

It  is  a  gloomy  tale  that  Shakspere  chooses  to  tell  and 
he  does  not  shrink  from  embroidering  it  with  needless 
atrocities.  Although  it  is  not  a  tragedy-of-blood,  it  has 
the  cold  and  cruel  ferocity  of  the  revenge-plays  which  held 
the  stage  when  Shakspere  came  up  to  London;  and  per- 
haps the  unusual  number  of  riming  couplets  is  evidence 
that  Shakspere  was  consciously  returning  to  an  earlier 
formula.  It  is  a  dish  of  horrors  compounded  for  sturdy 
Elizabethan  digestions,  and  often  it  is  too  strongly  fla- 
vored for  our  more  dainty  palates.  It  commingles  ingrati- 
tude and  adultery,  mendacity  and  treachery,  assassina- 
tion and  parricide.  In  its  higher  aspects  it  is  for  all  time 
a  masterpiece  of  the  master  poet  of  the  stage;  and  in  its 
lower  moments  it  is  adjusted  to  the  baser  likings  of  the 
Elizabethan  rabble.  The  plucking  out  of  Gloster's  eyes 
before  the  eyes  of  the  spectators,  and  the  crushing  of  one 
of  them  under  foot  by  Cornwall — this  is  simply  hideous, 
and  it  is  dramatically  useless.  It  is  introduced  because 
of  its  brutality,  for  the  sheer  effect  of  theatrical  shock, 
since  there  is  realty  no  motive  for  it,  as  Regan  would 
naturally  order  Gloster  to  be  killed  at  once,  which  is  what 
she  later  regrets  not  having  done.  This  scene  is  repug- 
nant even  to  the  reader;  and  to  the  spectator  it  is  abso- 
lutely intolerable. 

So  also  the  sudden  lust  of  Goneril  and  Regan  for 
Edmund  is  not  led  up  to  and  not  made  probable,  even  if 
we  are  willing  enough  to  believe  that  any  depravity  is 


284         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

possible  in  the  villainous  bastard  and  in  either  of  the 
villainous  sisters.  Edmund  is  another  Iago  and  obvi- 
ously composed  to  be  impersonated  by  the  same  per- 
former, just  as  Kent  is  composed  for  the  actor  of  Cassio. 
Edmund  has  all  the  iniquity  of  Iago  without  the  largeness 
of  that  incomparable  villain.  Like  Iago  he  deceives  all 
the  persons  in  the  play  in  turn  and  he  never  deceives  the 
audience,  to  whom  he  unveils  himself  in  soliloquies  in 
which  he  stands  revealed  for  what  he  really  is,  free  from 
all  self-deception.  He  even  borrows  several  of  Iago's 
devices  for  hoodwinking  Othello  and  employs  them  less 
aptly  to  trick  his  father  into  a  belief  of  his  brother's  vil- 
lainy. And  he  is  inferior  to  Iago  in  his  final  motiveless 
confession,  far  feebler  than  the  persisting  impenitence  of 
Othello's  destroyer. 

HI 

It  is  often  urged,  and  with  reason,  that  a  dramatist  has 
the  right  to  choose  his  story  at  will  and  that  we  have  no 
warrant  for  quarreling  with  his  choice.  We  must  take 
his  tale  as  it  came  to  him,  whatever  its  deficiency,  im- 
probability or  plausibility.  As  Professor  Lounsbury  de- 
clares, "we  give  our  faith  to  the  fable,  however  extrava- 
gant, because  the  author  has  a  prescriptive  right  to  require 
it;  because,  furthermore,  fiction  cannot  assume  anything 
stranger  than  what  fact  actually  presents.  .  .  .  We  de- 
mand that  the  characters  shall  act  in  accordance  with  the 
motives  which  under  the  given  conditions  would  and 
should  dominate  their  conduct."  A  little  earlier  the 
same  acute  critic  asserted  that  Shakspere  often  adopted 
for  his  theme  a  story  improbable  or  even  impossible; 
"that  it  should  be  one  which  would  be  accepted  by  his 


'KING  LEAR'  285 

audience  was  all  that  he  asked."  But  his  Elizabethan 
audience  had  tastes  other  than  ours;  and  that  a  theme 
should  be  acceptable  to  them  is  not  to  say  that  it  is 
necessarily  acceptable  to  us  three  centuries  later.  Yet 
there  is  cogency  in  the  plea  that  every  author  is  entitled 
to  select  the  postulate  upon  which  he  will  build  his  play. 
That  author  is  fortunate,  however,  who  can  direct  our 
attention  only  to  the  consequences  of  his  postulate  and 
avoid  forcing  us  to  behold  the  improbability  as  it  ac- 
tually happened. 

This  is  what  Sophocles  was  enabled  to  accomplish  in 
'(Edipus  the  King,'  thus  minimizing  the  inacceptability 
of  his  postulate.  An  oracle  had  predicted  that  the  son  of 
Jocasta  should  slay  his  father  and  wed  his  mother;  and 
when  the  play  opens  this  double  calamity  has  already 
come  to  pass.  It  is  inconceivable  that  Jocasta,  warned 
by  the  prediction,  should  not  have  investigated  im- 
mediately the  murder  of  her  first  husband;  and  it  is  even 
more  inconceivable  that  she  should  ever  have  married 
again  with  a  man  young  enough  to  be  her  son.  But 
these  improbabilities,  not  to  call  them  impossibilities,  are 
in  the  original  myth;  and  without  them  there  can  be  no 
play  on  that  theme.  Sophocles  takes  the  story  as  he 
finds  it  and  very  wisely  makes  no  attempt  to  explain 
away  its  constituent  elements;  thus  he  does  not  call  at- 
tention in  any  way  to  these  inacceptable  inconsistencies. 
Things  are  what  they  are,  that  is  enough  for  him;  and 
he  exerts  his  energy  in  setting  before  the  spectators  the 
appalling  consequence  of  these  things. 

The  postulate  of  'King  Lear,'  the  childish  project 
hatched  in  the  head  of  that  high-strung  sovran  to  divide 
his  kingdom  among  his  three  daughters  in  proportion  to 
the   affection   they   severally  are   willing   to   express   for 


286         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

him,  is  not  actually  impossible,  even  if  it  is  highly  im- 
probable, and  even  if  it  is  admissible  only  in  a  monarch 
already  entering  on  his  dotage.  But  this  is  in  the  orig- 
inal myth,  and  without  it  there  can  be  no  play  on  that 
theme.  And  it  cannot  be  shirked  and  merely  described. 
Shakspere  cannot  follow  the  example  of  Sophocles  and 
begin  the  play  at  a  later  moment.  This  scene  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  in  itself;  it  must  take  place  before  our 
eyes;  we  must  see  the  king,  and  we  must  hear  each  of 
the  three  daughters  in  turn.  This  actual  visual  impres- 
sion makes  us  see  for  ourselves  the  artificiality  of  the 
postulate  on  which  the  whole  play  rests.  It  makes  it 
difficult  for  us  not  to  perceive  the  puerility  of  Lear's 
scheme  and  the  absurdity  of  the  volcanic  rage  which  its 
miscarriage  arouses  in  him.  The  scene  itself  is  written 
with  power  and  the  characters  start  to  life  in  the  course 
of  it;  but  we  can  accept  it  only  by  putting  constraint  upon 
our  common  sense.  Lear's  folly  is  so  unmistakable  that 
he  is  deprived  of  our  sympathy  at  the  start;  and  even 
Cordelia's  attitude  seems  a  little  constrained,  not  to 
term  it  hard  or  cold. 

Yet  when  all  is  said,  when  every  deduction  has  been 
made,  when  every  cavil  has  been  urged,  we  must  return 
to  the  conviction  that  'King  Lear'  is  a  mighty  piece  of 
work  which  only  Shakspere  could  accomplish,  and  without 
which  his  position  as  a  poet  would  not  be  as  high  as  it  is. 
To  this  play,  planned  for  the  theater  itself  and  conformed 
to  the  likings  of  the  Elizabethan  playgoers,  he  gives  a 
vague  vastness.  He  peoples  the  stage  with  a  host  of 
contending  characters  entangled  in  the  web  of  an  in- 
tricate action  and  often  looming  larger  than  the  space 
they  are  allowed  to  fill  in  the  story.  Apparently  these 
characters  took  possession  of  his  imagination  and   ran 


'KING  LEAR'  287 

riot,  compelling  him  to  let  them  utter  their  inmost 
thoughts  and  to  express  their  unbridled  emotions.  And 
as  a  result  the  poet  ousts  the  playwright,  and  the  dra- 
matic poem  planned  as  a  play  to  please  the  public  when 
represented  in  the  playhouse  becomes  an  epic  poem  of  a 
world-wide  universality  for  which  the  theater  is  alto- 
gether too  small.  What  he  has  put  into  this  play  is  a 
dim  immensity  which  no  play  could  contain;  and  what 
the  play  loses  in  dramatic  effectiveness  the  poem  gains  in 
epic  grandeur.  The  drama  is  not  only  unfitted  for  per- 
formance on  our  modern  picture-frame  stage,  with  its 
realistic  scenery;  it  is  almost  equally  unfitted  for  per- 
formance on  the  medieval  platform-stage,  without  any 
obtrusive  scenic  accompaniment.  It  is  built  too  big  for 
any  conceivable  representation  by  actors  of  flesh  and 
blood,  because  its  characters  are  more  than  mere  human 
beings;  they  are  monstrous  shapes,  driven  by  inexorable 
fate  through  a  dismal  chaos. 

"The  stage  is  the  test  of  strictly  dramatic  quality,  and 
'King  Lear'  is  too  huge  for  the  stage,"  Professor  Bradley 
remarks,  admitting  that  it  is  a  great  stage-play  also,  with 
scenes  effective  in  the  theater  even  now,  and  losing  when 
acted  very  little  of  the  spell  they  have  for  the  imagina- 
tion. "But  that  which  makes  the  peculiar  greatness  of 
'King  Lear' — the  immense  scope  of  the  work,  the  mass  \ 
and  variety  of  intense  experience  which  it  contains;  the 
interpenetration  of  sublime  imagination,  piercing  pathos, 
and  humor  almost  as  moving  as  the  pathos;  the  vastness 
of  the  convulsion  both  of  nature  and  human  passion;  the 
vagueness  of  the  scene  where  the  action  takes  place,  and 
of  the  movements  of  the  figures  which  cross  this  scene; 
the  strange  atmosphere,  cold  and  dark,  which  strikes  on 
us   as  we  enter  this   scene,   enfolding  these  figures  and 


288         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

magnifying  their  dim  outlines  like  a  winter  mist;  the 
half-realized  suggestion  of  vast  universal  powers  working 
in  the  world  of  individual  fates  and  passions — all  this 
interferes  with  dramatic  clearness  even  when  the  play  is 
read,  and  in  the  theater  not  only  refuses  to  reveal  itself 
fully  through  the  senses  but  seems  to  be  almost  in  con- 
tradiction with  their  reports. "  And  a  little  earlier  in  the 
lecture  from  which  this  quotation  is  taken  Professor 
Bradley  asserted  that  when  he  was  feeling  that  'King 
Lear'  was  greater  than  'Hamlet'  or  'Othello'  or  'Mac- 
beth/ and  that  it  was  the  fullest  revelation  of  Shakspere's 
power,  he  found  that  he  was  not  regarding  it  simply  as  a 
drama,  but  rather  grouping  it  in  his  mind  "with  works 
like  the  'Prometheus  Vinctus'  and  the  'Divine  Comedy/ 
and  even  with  the  greatest  symphonies  of  Beethoven  and 
the  statues  in  the  Medici  chapel." 

This  is  an  illuminating  criticism,  and  by  its  light  we 
can  perceive  why  'King  Lear'  made  so  different  an 
impression  upon  Shelley  and  Thackeray.  Shakspere  in- 
tended to  write  a  poetic  drama,  and  what  he  did  write 
was  a  dramatic  poem.  The  major  merits  of  'King  Lear' 
are  not  so  much  dramatic  as  they  are  epic,  just  as  the 
major  merits  of  Michael  Angelo's  mighty  figures  are  epic 
rather  than  sculptural.  There  is  an  epic  element  in  'Pro- 
metheus Vinctus/  as  there  is  in  all  the  tragedies  of  iEschy- 
lus,  and  even  in  some  of  those  of  Sophocles;  and  a  similar 
epic  element,  although  far  smaller  in  proportion,  is  not 
uncommon  in  the  Elizabethan  drama,  most  easily  recog- 
nizable in  certain  of  Marlowe's  plays.  But  in  no  other 
Elizabethan  drama  has  this  epic  element  superseded  the 
dramatic  element  and  usurped  the  attention  as  trium- 
phantly as  in  '  King  Lear.'  And  as  a  result  of  this  wanton 
excess  of  the  epic  over  the  dramatic  the  tragedy  finds 


'  KING  LEAR'  289 

itself  thrust  out  of  the  theater,  for  which  it  was  com- 
posed, and  relegated  to  the  library,  to  which  Shakspere 
seems  never  to  have  given  a  thought. 

IV 

And  this  brings  us  to  another  question,  for  which  it  is 
not  easy  to  find  a  satisfactory  answer.  Shakspere  was 
the  customary  playwright  of  the  Globe  Theater,  of  which 
he  was  one  of  the  managers  and  in  which  he  was  an  actor 
himself.  It  is  evident  that  he  planned  this  play  for  actual 
performance  by  his  comrades.  Why  was  it  and  how  was 
it  that  in  the  course  of  composition  he  allowed  the  condi- 
tions of  actual  performance  to  lose  their  control?  Why 
did  he  start  to  write  a  play  for  the  theater  and  end  by 
writing  a  play  too  huge  for  the  theater?  He  did  this  only 
once,  and  in  no  one  of  the  plays  which  he  prepared  after 
'King  Lear'  does  he  undertake  so  overwhelming  a  theme. 
In  all  his  later  dramas  the  subject  is  simpler  and  the 
crowd  of  characters  is  smaller.  There  are  not  lacking 
passages  here  and  there  in  later  plays  as  well  as  in  ear- 
lier, which  are  too  compact  or  too  elusive  for  immediate 
apprehension  by  any  audience,  however  attentive.  But 
only  this  once  does  he  compose  scene  after  scene  which 
go  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  acted  drama.  Only  this 
once  does  he  stand  forth  a  poet  rather  than  a  playwright. 

In  the  composition  of  a  poetic  play  the  poet  and  the 
playwright  must  ever  work  in  harmonious  sympathy, 
each  supporting  the  other  and  yet  respecting  the  exigencies 
of  the  other's  special  art.  Yet  Sir  Walter  Besant  was 
shrewd  in  his  assertion  that  for  successful  collaboration 
one  of  the  two  participants  must  be  the  senior  partner 
with  the  controlling  voice.     When  the  architect  and  the 


29o         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

sculptor  join  forces  it  is  the  sculptor  who  is  the  junior 
partner  if  an  edifice  is  to  be  adorned  with  statuary,  and  it 
is  the  architect  if  a  group  is  to  be  supplied  with  an  appro- 
priate base.  When  poet  and  playwright  join  in  the  mak- 
ing of  a  poetic  drama  the  ultimate  decision  must  rest 
with  the  playwright  and  the  poet  can  express  himself 
only  within  the  framework  provided  for  him  by  his  asso- 
ciate. Shakspere  accepts  this  condition  in  ' Hamlet'  and 
in  ' Othello,'  and  rarely  in  any  other  drama  does  the  poet 
in  him  demand  more  than  he  is  willing  to  grant  as  a 
playwright.  'Othello*  and  'Hamlet'  are  poems,  beyond 
all  question;  they  are  poetic  in  theme,  poetic  in  treatment 
and  poetic  in  atmosphere.  None  the  less  are  they  plays, 
first  of  all,  with  plots  so  boldly  wrought  that  each  of 
them  can  stand  alone  even  when  it  is  stripped  of  poetry 
and  reduced  to  the  skeleton  libretto  of  an  opera. 

Yet  in  the  course  of  the  composition  of  'King  Lear*  we 
see  that  Shakspere  the  poet  has  unceremoniously  taken 
the  reins  out  of  the  hand  of  Shakspere  the  playwright. 
When  we  seek  an  adequate  explanation  for  this  unexpected 
happening  we  are  left  to  conjecture.  Perhaps  it  may  be 
a  symptom  of  that  weariness  of  constructive  labor,  and 
possibly  even  of  the  dramatic  form  with  its  narrow  limi- 
tations, which  is  more  or  less  evident  in  all  the  plays  com- 
posed after  'King  Lear.'  In  the  earliest  pieces  which  he 
wrote  we  have  seen  him  diligently  studying  to  acquire 
a  mastery  of  the  play-maker's  art,  experimenting  freely, 
repeating  effective  devices  and  improving  their  effective- 
ness on  repetition.  He  showed  that  he  had  learned  how 
to  build  a  comic  plot  in  the  '  Comedy  of  Errors,'  and  that 
he  could  apply  his  acquired  skill  to  the  handling  of 
a  tragic  plot  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet.'  As  we  follow  his 
career  as  a  playwright  we  can  discern  a  steady  develop- 


'KING  LEAR'  291 

ment  of  his  dramaturgic  dexterity;  and  we  cannot  fail  to 
recognize  that  this  must  be  due  to  a  constant  tension  of 
effort,  an  eager  willingness  to  take  all  possible  pains  to 
do  a  good  job  in  the  most  workmanlike  fashion.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  cannot  fail  to  find  in  his  latest  plays  a  re- 
laxing of  this  deliberate  effort  for  excellence  in  construc- 
tion and  a  readiness  to  rely  rather  upon  his  ability  to 
vitalize  characters,  upon  his  affluence  of  purely  poetic 
inspiration  and  upon  his  fund  of  philosophic  wisdom.  It 
is  as  though  toward  the  end  of  his  labors  for  the  stage, 
when  he  could  not  but  be  conscious  of  the  full  maturity 
of  his  power  as  a  poet,  he  had  tired  of  the  hard  work  of 
construction,  which  takes  time  and  thought  and  which 
can  never  be  left  to  the  inspiration  of  the  moment. 

Here  it  is  needful  again  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  as  there  are  three  periods  of  his  development  as  a 
playwright — that  of  devoted  experiment,  that  of  assured 
mastery  and  that  of  relaxed  carelessness — so  there  are 
three  periods  of  his  development  as  a  poet.  At  first  he 
has  little  to  say  for  himself;  he  abounds  in  the  conceits 
and  the  figures  of  speech  common  to  all  the  Elizabethan 
sonneteers;  he  pads  out  his  lines  with  apt  adjectives,  and 
these  lines  are  likely  to  be  more  or  less  self-contained— 
that  is,  to  have  their  meaning  complete  in  the  single  line. 
At  this  stage  of  his  growth  he  is  not  overburdened  with 
thoughts,  and  the  most  obvious  qualities  of  his  verse  are 
its  cleverness  and  its  brilliancy.  He  is  preeminently  an 
Elizabethan,  and,  as  Matthew  Arnold  declared,  the  Eliza- 
bethan age,  "steeped  in  humor  and  fantasticality  up  to  its 
very  lips,  newly  arrived  at  the  true  use  of  human  faculties 
after  their  long  term  of  bondage,  and  delighting  to  exer- 
cise them  freely,  suffers  from  its  own  extravagance  in  this 
first  exercise  of  them,  can  hardly  bring  itself  to  see  an 


292         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

object  quietly  or  to  describe  it  temperately. "  But  Shak- 
spere  soon  outgrows  this  youthful  striving;  his  imagination 
expands  swiftly  and  powerfully;  his  observation  supplies 
him  with  more  cogent  figures  of  speech;  his  philosophy  of 
life  matures;  his  verse  becomes  suppler  and  ampler,  run- 
ning over  line  after  line,  often  with  feminine  endings. 
The  meter  now  marches  even  with  the  meaning  and  con- 
structs the  rhythm,  because  it  was  always  fitted  for  de- 
livery by  the  character.  Significant  as  the  speeches  may 
be,  they  are  clear  to  the  apprehension  of  the  hearer. 
They  are  at  once  vigorous  and  melodious;  and  at  his  best 
Shakspere  has  now  that  golden  perfection  of  style  in 
which  he  is  unrivaled  among  English  poets.  His  verse  is 
full  but  not  overflowing,  and  there  is  a  beautiful  equilib- 
rium between  thought  and  phrase.  Finally,  as  he  grows  in 
stature  and  in  wisdom,  he  finds  himself  with  so  much  to 
say  that  he  has  to  compress  his  message  and  to  charge  his 
words  with  a  weight  of  meaning,  so  that  his  lines  become 
almost  harsh  at  times  and  crabbed,  and  on  occasion  even 
obscure.  His  thoughts  tumble  out  so  many  and  so  fast 
that  they  seem  to  trip  each  other  up;  and  sometimes  it  is 
only  with  difficulty  that  we  can  follow  them  as  they  fall 
from  the  lips  of  the  actors. 

This  is  the  case  not  infrequently  in  'King  Lear';  and  it 
is  in  this  strangely  epic  drama  that  Shakspere  has  most 
completely  displayed  his  marvelous  power  as  a  poet.  In 
this  play  he  has  an  abundance  of  passages  that  move  the 
emotions  as  keenly  as  they  exercise  the  intellect;  but  he 
has  also  speeches  hard  to  take  in  because  he  has  too  much 
matter  pressing  for  utterance.  In  the  full  plenitude  of 
his  power  as  a  poet  and  profoundly  inspired  by  the 
epic  appeal  of  the  awful  story  he  was  telling,  he  neglects 
the  noble  harmony  of  thought  and  expression,  as  he  dis- 


'KING  LEAR'  293 

regards  also  the  exigencies  of  the  stage.  He  writes  as 
one  carried  up  into  the  night  by  the  strong  wing  of  his  own 
soaring  imagination  and  pouring  forth  his  soul  not  so 
much  for  the  delight  of  others,  or  even  for  the  relief  of  self- 
expression,  but  simply  because  he  must. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
SHAKSPERE  AND  HIS  AUDIENCE 

I 

"To  achieve  immortality  a  work  must  unite  so  many 
excellent  qualities  that  no  one  can  easily  seize  and  ap- 
preciate them  all,"  Schopenhauer  asserted.  "Yet  these 
excellent  qualities  are  always  recognized  and  honored, 
some  by  one  and  some  by  another.  Thus  the  reputation 
of  the  work,  esteemed  now  in  this  direction  and  then  in 
that,  maintains  itself  through  the  long  centuries,  and  in 
spite  of  every  shifting  of  interest."  And  it  may  be  added 
that  the  quality  most  easily  seized  at  first  is  conformity 
to  the  taste  and  temper  of  the  time  and  of  the  place  where 
it  was  originally  produced.  By  other  and  more  excel- 
lent qualities  the  work  must  maintain  its  fame,  but  in  the 
beginning  it  wins  its  reputation  because  it  tickles  the 
likings  of  its  author's  immediate  contemporaries.  Yet 
their  likings  may  be  widely  different  from  ours,  and  the 
very  qualities  which  gave  the  work  its  earliest  vogue  may 
come  after  a  while  to  obstruct  its  full  appreciation.  From 
this  law  even  the  plays  of  Shakspere  are  not  exempt,  and 
often  the  characteristics  antagonistic  to  us  were  precisely 
those  most  attractive  when  they  were  brought  out  at  the 
Globe  Theater.  'King  Lear,'  for  example,  epic  as  it  is  in 
its  immensity,  and  transcending  the  conditions  of  actual 
performance  in  any  theater,  Elizabethan  or  Victorian,  is 
based  on   the  kind  of  story  in  which  Tudor  audiences 

delighted. 

294 


SHAKSPERE  AND   HIS  AUDIENCE        295 

The  supreme  qualities  of  Shakspere's  major  dramas  are 
for  all  time;  but  their  minor  defects,  and  even  not  a  few 
deficiencies  not  fairly  to  be  dismissed  as  unimportant,  are 
to  be  ascribed  to  his  desire  to  give  his  own  audiences  what 
they  were  accustomed  to  relish,  even  if  he  came  in  time  to 
give  them  much  beyond  the  appreciation  of  the  majority 
of  his  spectators.  This  is  what  Moliere  did  also;  although 
his  audience  had  a  higher  level  of  cultivation  than  Shak- 
spere's he  stepped  down  from  the  austere  gravity  of  the 
'Misanthrope'  to  the  physical  humor  of  Scapin  envelop- 
ing himself  in  a  sack.  Shakspere  had  to  make  more  fre- 
quent and  more  abundant  concessions  than  Moliere  be- 
cause his  spectators  were  ruder,  coarser  and  at  times 
more  frankly  brutal.  Those  aspects  of  his  plays  which 
result  from  his  condescension  to  his  public  often  annoy 
us  now.  They  have  to  be  explained  away;  they  may  have 
a  historic  interest  for  scholars,  of  course,  but  for  most  of 
us  they  interfere  with  the  complete  enjoyment  of  a  large 
number  of  his  plays.  Much  of  what  was  contemporary  in 
Shakspere's  work  has  not  infrequently  proved  to  be  only 
temporary  in  its  effect,  and  therefore  discordant  with 
what  is  perennial  in  its  appeal. 

"If  any  man  ever  imitated  and  gave  full  utterance 
to  the  characteristic  ideas  of  his  contemporaries  it  was 
certainly  Shakspere,"  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  maintained; 
"and  nobody  ever  accepted  more  thoroughly  the  form  of 
art  which  they  worked  out" — a  form  of  art  that  had 
arisen  in  response  to  the  preferences  of  these  contem- 
poraries. And  elsewhere  the  same  keen  critic  declared 
that  "every  man  is  an  organ  of  the  society  in  which  he 
has  been  brought  up,  since  the  material  upon  which  he 
works  is  the  whole  complex  of  conceptions,  religious, 
imaginative  and  ethical,  which  forms  his  mental  atmos- 


296         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

phere."  This  must  be  specially  the  case  with  the  play- 
wright, whose  success  depends  on  his  pleasing  the  main 
body  of  these  contemporaries.  Shakspere's  contempo- 
raries were,  first  of  all,  Englishmen,  with  their  three- 
fold inheritance  from  the  Celts,  the  Anglo-Saxons  and 
the  Latin-Normans.  As  such  they  had  superabundant 
energy  and  soaring  imagination,  hard  heads  and  thick 
skins,  an  intense  relish  for  reality  and  also  a  genuine 
fondness  for  fantasy.  English  humor  they  had  also,  so 
different  from  the  humor  of  every  other  race,  and  derived, 
as  M.  Jusserand  has  suggested,  from  the  happy  combi- 
nation of  Saxon  seriousness  with  Norman  irony. 

Then  they  were  Englishmen  of  a  particular  time,  of  the 
epoch  when  the  British  Isles  felt  the  full  force  of  the  Re- 
nascence which  emancipated  men's  souls  from  the  restric- 
tions of  the  Middle  Ages  and  which  bestowed  a  large 
liberty  of  the  mind,  often  accompanied  by  a  not  less  wel- 
come license  of  the  body.  "There  is  a  certain  essence  of 
national  meaning,  which  is  as  untranslatable  as  poetry," 
said  Bagehot;  and  there  is  also  a  similar  essence  of  each  of 
the  great  epochs  of  human  advance.  Shakspere's  period  is 
the  period  of  Bacon  and  Raleigh,  of  Drake  and  Frobisher, 
and  of  the  stalwart  Elizabeth  herself.  England  had  peace 
and  power  and  plenty,  for  the  royal  rule  was  firmly  estab- 
lished and  the  Armada  had  been  scattered.  The  Queen 
might  have  no  possessions  on  the  continent,  but  she  was 
all  the  securer  in  her  island  realm;  and  her  sturdy  subjects 
were  puffed  with  pride  in  their  newly  acknowledged  posi- 
tion among  the  nations  of  the  world.  They  were  ready 
for  reckless  enterprises  and  for  daredevil  deeds  on  the 
chance  of  profit  or  of  glory.  They  felt  themselves  free 
to  attempt  anything.  "In  this  outbreak  and  absence  of 
fetters  they  resemble  thoroughbred  horses  let  loose  in  the 


SHAKSPERE  AND   HIS  AUDIENCE        297 

meadow,"  so  Taine  put  it;  "their  inborn  instincts  have  not 
been  tamed  nor  muzzled  nor  diminished." 

The  Tudor  Englishman,  as  he  is  stripped  for  our  study 
in  the  literature,  in  the  letters  and  in  the  annals  of 
the  time,  is  seen  to  be  sensuous  and  sensual,  joying  in  the 
things  of  the  flesh,  yet  capable  also  of  appreciating  the 
things  of  the  mind.  Eager  and  enthusiastic,  he  had  a 
hearty  and  affluent  nature.  He  scorned  premeditation 
and  was  swift  to  act  on  sudden  impulse.  He  was  as  furi- 
ous in  hate  as  love.  He  was  overflowing  with  animal 
spirits,  more  willing  to  give  a  blow  than  to  take  one  and 
finding  unfailing  pleasure  even  in  looking  on  at  a  fight, 
whether  in  the  street  or  the  theater.  He  had  no  timid 
shrinking  from  pain  or  wounds  or  death;  and  he  was  as 
ready  to  bear  them  himself  as  to  bestow  them  on  others. 
He  was  steady  of  nerve,  as  became  a  man  who  might  be' 
thrust  into  the  stocks  or  made  to  stand  in  the  pillory  to 
be  pelted,  who  might  be  branded  with  hot  irons  or  tor- 
tured and  disemboweled,  who  might  be  hanged,  drawn 
and  quartered,  who  might  be  burned  alive  at  Smithfield 
or  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill. 

Even  if  he  happened  to  escape  any  of  these  pains  and 
penalties  himself,  he  could  not  avoid  being  a  witness  of 
their  infliction  upon  others.  He  might  take  a  day  off  to 
see  a  prisoner  thrown  alive  into  a  boiling  caldron;  and  if 
he  merely  took  a  walk  he  could  not  shut  his  eyes  to  the 
score  of  human  heads  rotting  on  the  spikes  of  London 
Bridge,  a  sight  familiar  to  every  child  that  crossed  the 
river.  And  even  the  children  were  likely  to  learn  that 
Elizabeth  was  so  violent  in  her  anger  that  she  boxed  the 
ears  of  an  offending  courtier,  and  that  Henry  VIII  had 
been  so  merciless  in  his  vengeance  that  he  gave  orders  to 
sack  a  whole  town  and  to  put  all  the  inhabitants  to  the 


298         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

sword.  Elizabeth  was  the  true  child  of  Henry;  and  the 
women  of  her  court  were  almost  as  coarse-fibered  as  the 
men.  They  crowded  to  bull-baitings  just  as  Spanish 
women  still  flock  to  bull-fights.  Whipping  the  blind  bear 
to  death  was  declared  to  be  "a  charming  entertainment" 
for  ladies.  To  women  as  to  men  insanity  was  comic,  not 
terrible  or  pitiful;  and  on  special  occasions  the  madmen 
were  brought  out  to  make  sport  for  invited  guests. 

II 

Such  were  the  Londoners  whom  Shakspere  had  to  lure 
into  the  Globe  and  to  amuse  after  they  had  paid  their 
admission  into  that  unroofed  area.  While  there  were 
boxes  in  the  galleries  for  the  few  women  who  were  bold 
enough  to  adventure  themselves  in  this  doubtful  com- 
pany, and  while  there  were  three-legged  stools  on  the  stage 
itself  for  the  men  about  town,  the  main  body  of  the  spec- 
tators had  to  stand  in  the  yard  exposed  to  the  inclemency 
of  the  weather.  These  groundlings  were  a  turbulent  lot, 
often  apprentices  and  sailors  mixed  with  the  rifFrafF  and 
rabble  of  a  seaport.  They  came  to  the  theater  after  a 
solid  British  midday  meal;  and  before  the  performance, 
during  the  intermission  and  even  while  the  play  was 
going  on  they  talked  freely;  they  cracked  nuts  and  drank 
beer;  they  smoked,  as  men  do  to-day  in  the  more  popular 
music-halls.  They  often  bandied  words  with  the  gallants 
seated  on  the  stage;  and  sometimes  this  interchange  of 
insults  led  to  actual  rioting.  They  insisted  on  having 
their  own  way;  and  sometimes  they  compelled  the  actors 
to  change  the  program  and  to  perform  a  different  play 
from  that  announced  at  the  door. 

Such  were    the   spectators   Shakspere   had   to   please. 


SHAKSPERE  AND  HIS  AUDIENCE        299 

Although  they  had  not  the  alert  intelligence  of  the  Greeks 
who  sat  tier  on  tier  on  the  curving  hillside  of  the  Acrop- 
olis when  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles  were  performed  in 
the  orchestra  of  the  theater  of  Dionysus  as  part  of  a 
religious  ceremony,  and  although  they  had  not  the  sturdy 
sobriety  of  the  burghers  of  Paris  who  supported  the 
Palais  Royal  when  Moliere  was  bringing  out  the  best  of 
his  incomparable  comedies,  they  were  not  stupid — far 
from  it.  They  were  eager  to  be  entertained;  but  they 
were  sluggish  of  mind  and  often  inattentive.  They  were 
unwilling  to  take  trouble  and  they  preferred  sign-post 
directions,  and  therefore  we  see  the  villain  setting  forth 
his  evil  designs  frankly  in  a  soliloquy,  so  that  not  even 
the  most  careless  among  the  audience  could  mistake  him. 
Violently  passionate  themselves,  they  demanded  lofty 
emotion  and  broad  humor.  Avid  of  swift  sensation,  hot 
and  immediate  in  its  reaction,  they  wanted  strong  waters, 
undiluted  and  to  be  gulped  down  without  winking.  They 
did  not  object  to  sanguinary  brutality  or  to  ferocious 
cruelty,  which  responded  to  their  need  for  constant  excite- 
ment. They  found  pleasure  in  startling  contrasts,  in  un- 
foreseen changes  of  mood,  and  even  in  the  transformation 
of  character  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  They  were  glad 
to  have  their  ears  filled  with  the  roar  of  cannon  and  to 
have  their  eyes  entertained  by  processions  and  by  battles, 
by  haggard  witches  and  by  sheeted  ghosts  with  gory 
throats. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  their  lack  of  decorum  and  even  of  kindly 
feeling,  in  spite  of  their  primitive  savagery  of  manners, 
they  responded  also  to  nobler  appeals;  and  as  Taine  said, 
"in  the  theater  at  this  moment  their  souls  were  as  fresh, 
as  ready  to  feel  everything  as  the  poet  was  to  dare  every- 
thing."    They  had  their  loftier  likings  as  well  as  their 


3oo         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

baser  instincts.  "Like  the  people  of  all  nations,"  as 
another  French  historian  of  English  literature  says, 
"they  wanted  to  see  on  the  stage,  in  more  brilliant  or 
repulsive  colors,  that  is  to  say,  in  more  accentuated  hues, 
what  they  dimly  observed  within  or  around  themselves, 
what  they  felt  but  could  not  express,  what  they  might 
do  but  could  not  tell." 

What  the  spectators  wanted  to  see — this  was  what  the 
Elizabethan  playwrights  sought  always  to  supply,  Shak- 
spere  as  well  as  the  rest.  He  was  "a  popular  playwright," 
as  Professor  Bradley  asserts,  explaining  that  this  means 
not  only  that  many  of  Shakspere's  plays  "were  favorites 
in  his  day,  but  that  he  wrote,  mainly  at  least,  for  the  more 
popular  kind  of  audience,  and  that,  within  certain  limits, 
he  conformed  to  its  taste."  He  utilizes  any  tale  that  he 
happens  to  lay  hands  on,  regardless  of  its  veracity,  or 
even  of  its  probability,  so  long  as  he  believes  it  to  be  the 
kind  of  story  that  his  audience  would  accept.  He  inserts 
numberless  fights  and  battles  to  gladden  their  eyes,  and 
he  calls  to  his  aid  frequent  trumpets  and  occasional 
cannon  to  charm  their  ears.  It  has  been  pointed  out 
that  in  the  first  part  of  '  Henry  VI'  there  were  repre- 
sented "a  pitched  battle  of  two  armies,  an  attack  on  a 
city  wall  with  scaling  ladders,  two  street-scuffles,  four 
single  combats,  four  skirmishes,  and  seven  excursions." 
These  were  for  sight;  and  as  for  sound  there  were  "a 
dead  march,  two  other  marches,  three  retreats,  three 
sonnets,  seven  flourishes,  eighteen  alarums,"  besides 
"five  directions  for  drums,  one  for  a  horn,  and  five  for 
soundings,  of  a  kind  not  specified,  by  trumpets." 

What  Shakspere  himself  thought  about  the  future  life 
and  about  the  supernatural  we  can  only  guess,  as  we  can 
but  surmise  what  his  religious  views  may  have  been.     But 


SHAKSPERE  AND  HIS  AUDIENCE       301 

supernatural  superstitions  were  rife  among  the  common 
people  in  his  day;  very  likely  most  of  those  who  gathered 
in  the  Globe  believed  in  fairies,  pretty  certainly  they  be- 
lieved in  ghosts,  and  almost  unquestionably  they  believed 
in  witches.  That  his  public  was  willing  to  accept  these 
grosser  manifestations  of  the  supernatural  was  warrant 
enough  for  Shakspere.  So  we  have  fairies  in  the  'Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream'  and  witches  in  'Macbeth/ 
And  ghosts  march  across  the  stage,  sometimes  as  single 
spies  and  sometimes  in  battalions.  In  'Hamlet*  the 
Ghost  is  the  mainspring  of  the  story;  in  'Macbeth'  and  in 
'Julius  Caesar*  the  ghastly  shades  of  Banquo  and  of 
Julius  Caesar  appear  at  crucial  moments  of  the  action; 
and  in  'Richard  III'  the  gates  of  the  charnel-house  are 
opened  wide  for  a  spectral  procession  to  pass  before  the 
startled  gaze  of  the  murderer.  In  both  'Julius  Caesar'  and 
'Antony  and  Cleopatra'  Shakspere  introduces  soothsayers, 
actually  possessed  of  an  insight  into  the  future.  In  the 
'Tempest'  he  creates  an  impossible  being,  a  missing  link 
between  man  and  beast. 

There  might  be  scattered  here  and  there  among  the 
audience  at  the  Globe  a  few  who  did  not  hold  the  preva- 
lent beliefs  about  disembodied  spirits;  but  the  play- 
wright relies  rather  on  the  many  than  on  the  few.  There 
might  also  be  an  occasional  spectator  who  had  traveled 
and  acquired  wide  geographical  knowledge  by  personal 
experience,  yet  the  immense  majority  of  those  in  the 
theater  at  any  performance  could  know  little  or  nothing 
about  foreign  parts.  This  accounts  for  the  unscholarly 
inaccuracy  of  Shakspere's  geography.  He  bestows  a  sea- 
coast  on  Bohemia;  he  accepts  Delphi  as  an  island;  he  cred- 
its Bergamo  with  sailmakers;  he  raises  a  beetling  cliff  on 
the  plain  of  Elsinore;  he  confuses  distances  and  localities 


3o2         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

in  Scotland;  he  makes  Russians  suffer  from  seasickness 
on  their  way  to  Navarre.  Here,  it  is  true,  he  is  no  more 
careless  of  the  exact  fact  than  was  iEschylus  in  the  *  Pro- 
metheus Bound,'  where  Io  describes  her  wanderings  in 
obvious  ignorance  of  the  position  of  the  places  where  she 
is  supposed  to  have  been.  Apparently  both  the  Greek 
dramatist  and  the  English  were  content  to  utilize  place- 
names  for  their  familiarity  or  for  their  sonority,  with  no 
needless  striving  for  scientific  precision. 

They  may  have  known  better,  or  they  may  not.  Evi- 
dently they  held  that  such  slips  did  not  matter,  since 
scarcely  one  of  the  spectators  was  likely  to  pick  them  up. 
One  slip  that  Shakspere  makes  repeatedly  falls  into  an- 
other class;  it  is  a  blunder  which  may  very  well  have  been 
deliberate,  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  audience  itself.  He 
represents  Milan,  Mantua  and  Verona,  Rome  and  Flor- 
ence, as  seaports;  and  in  so  doing  he  may  have  been 
sinning  against  light  for  what  seemed  to  him  a  good  and 
sufficient  reason.  The  highways  of  travel  in  England  in 
Tudor  times  were  poor,  and  moreover  they  were  often  in- 
secure, so  that  the  customary  mode  of  going  anywhere  was 
by  sea  wherever  this  was  possible.  Londoners  went  by 
sea  to  Scotland,  no  less  than  to  France,  and  therefore  to 
take  ship  when  the  tide  served  would  seem  to  them  the 
most  natural  way  of  getting  from  one  place  to  another. 


Ill 

These  evidences  of  Shakspere's  conforming  to  the  gen- 
eral practice  of  the  Elizabethan  playwrights  must  needs 
be  noted,  but  they  are  none  of  them  important.  In  fact, 
they  are  external  rather  than  internal.  They  have  to  do 
with  the  trappings  of  the  play  and  not  with  its  body  or  its 


SHAKSPERE  AND  HIS  AUDIENCE       303 

soul.  And  when  we  insist  on  a  deeper  examination  into 
his  works,  to  discover  whether  he  makes  concessions  of 
more  serious  import  for  the  sake  of  pleasing  his  spectators, 
we  perceive  at  once  that  his  pieces  do  resemble  those  of 
his  rivals  in  certain  characteristics  which  we  may  there- 
fore assume  to  be  grateful  to  his  audience.  They  are 
stuffed  with  surprising  adventures  startling  to  the  verge 
of  incredibility;  they  abound  in  episodes  of  dark  violence 
and  of  bloody  cruelty;  they  soar  aloft  with  a  spontane- 
ous exuberance  which  almost  touches  exaggeration;  they 
often  bristle  with  patriotic  speeches,  and  they  are  some- 
times absurd  in  their  misrepresentation  of  the  national 
enemy;  they  are  sustained  by  a  profusion  of  sentiment,  of 
pretty  fancies  occasionally  little  better  than  conceits;  they 
are  diversified  by  frequent  comic  episodes,  generally  of  a 
broadly  farcical  humor,  and  their  dialogue  is  besprinkled 
with  puns  and  quibbles  even  at  moments  when  any  play- 
ing with  words  is  artistically  incongruous. 

But  have  we  any  grounds  for  believing  that  in  putting 
these  things  into  his  plays  Shakspere  was  consciously 
lowering  his  own  artistic  standard,  and  that  he  descended 
to  these  things  principally  and  primarily  because  of  his 
desire  to  please  the  spectators?  The  question  is  not  easy 
to  answer  offhand.  These  characteristics  are  not  pleasant 
to  us  and  we  should  like  to  think  that  Shakspere  felt  about 
them  as  we  do.  We  should  be  glad  to  believe  that  he  had  a 
keener  sense  of  artistic  propriety  than  these  things  reveal. 
Yet  we  have  little  warrant  for  this  belief  beyond  our  own 
inclination.  After  all,  Shakspere  was  an  Elizabethan;  he 
was  his  own  contemporary;  and  there  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  he  did  not  share  the  preferences  and  the  preju- 
dices of  the  majority  of  his  fellow-subjects,  however  un- 
acceptable these  preferences  and  prejudices  may  be  to  us 


3o4         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

three  centuries  later.  He  was  a  man  of  his  own  time,  to 
whom  brutality  and  cruelty  were  so  familiar  as  to  have 
bred  contempt.  He  was  a  right  Englishman,  glorying  in 
the  defiance  of  all-invading  Spain  and  in  the  dispersion  of 
its  vaunted  Armada;  and  if  his  praise  of  England  seems  a 
little  high-flown,  and  if  his  dispraise  of  her  enemies  seems 
a  little  unworthy  of  his  exalted  genius,  we  have  really  no 
right  to  assume  that  this  was  in  any  way  insincere  and 
to  suspect  that  it  was  merely  buncombe  and  claptrap. 
The  exuberance,  the  exaggeration,  the  startling  surprises 
which  we  find  in  his  plays  we  can  find  also  in  his  times; 
and  truth  is  even  stranger  than  fiction  and  fiction  is  ever 
lagging  behind  fact. 

The  frequent  farcical  scenes,  which  seem  to  us  almost 
obtrusive  in  grave  tragedies  like  ' Romeo  and  Juliet'  and 
'Hamlet,'  are  testimonies  to  the  playful  side  of  his  genius, 
not  as  valid  as  the  huge  figure  of  FalstafF,  but  often 
handled  with  a  joyful  gusto  only  a  little  inferior  to  that 
displayed  in  Henry  IV.'  If  we  do  not  accuse  Fielding 
and  Smollett,  Thackeray  and  Dickens,  of  debasing  their 
art  in  the  desire  to  win  broader  popular  approbation, 
when  they  exult  in  comic  scenes  and  in  comic  characters 
sometimes  so  highly  colored  as  to  be  very  near  caricature, 
surely  we  are  not  justified  in  bringing  the  like  accusa- 
tion against  Shakspere.  Doubtless  he  knew,  as  the  later 
English  novelists  also  knew,  that  these  laughter-provoking 
passages  would  be  popular;  but  he  put  them  in — or  at 
least  most  of  them — because  he  enjoyed  writing  them, 
and  not  solely,  or  even  chiefly,  because  he  was  respond- 
ing to  the  unseen  pressure  of  his  audiences. 

Even  clearer  is  the  case  in  regard  to  his  puns  and  his 
conceits.  "Shakspere's  indulgence  in  that  lowest  form  of 
intellectual  depravity,   quibbles  and  plays  upon  words, 


SHAKSPERE  AND   HIS  AUDIENCE        305 

cannot  be  questioned,"  Professor  Lounsbury  admits,  add- 
ing that  "it  was  the  greatest  literary  vice  of  his  time" 
and  that  "several  of  his  greatest  contemporaries  were 
addicted  to  it  also.  But  in  an  age  where  most  men  were 
vicious  he  was  the  most  vicious  of  all."  That  is  to  say, 
Shakspere  puns  because  he  likes  punning,  even  if  he  does 
it  also  because  it  was  the  fashion  of  the  hour  and  because 
it  was  highly  appreciated  by  his  audiences.  To  us 
Mark  Antony's  quibbling  with  hart  and  deer  over  the 
body  of  the  Julius  Caesar  whom  he  truly  loved  seems  an 
example  of  shocking  bad  taste.  But  that  Shakspere  de- 
scended to  such  quibbles  at  such  a  time  is  his  own 
fault,  even  if  it  is  in  a  minor  degree  the  fault  of  his  fellow- 
subjects.  The  fondness  for  the  pun  merely  for  its  own 
sake,  for  playing  on  the  empty  word,  still  survives  in 
Great  Britain,  although  it  has  never  flourished  to  a  like 
extent  in  the  United  States;  and  here  we  have  another 
of  the  differences  in  taste  which  now  separate  the  two 
peoples  who  have  English  for  their  mother-tongue.  No 
British  critic  can  be  recalled  who  has  spoken  out  so  boldly 
against  Shakspere's  addiction  to  the  quibble  as  the 
American  whose  opinion  has  just  been  quoted. 

A  similar  judgment  must  be  rendered  in  regard  to 
the  conceits  scattered  freely  throughout  the  dialogue  of 
Shakspere's  plays.  No  doubt,  his  spectators  liked  flowery 
language,  and  the  bulk  of  them  lacked  the  sureness  of 
taste  which  could  distinguish  between  a  barren  conceit 
and  a  bold  stroke  of  fancy.  Here  again  we  can  feel  sure 
that  Shakspere  was  pleasing  himself  at  the  same  time  that 
he  was  seeking  to  please  the  playgoers.  Here  we  have 
the  solid  support  of  his  narrative  poems,  the  'Rape  of 
Lucrece'  and  'Venus  and  Adonis,'  which  are  decorated  un- 
necessarily with  mere  conceits  as  hollow  as  they  are  frigid. 


3o6         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

It  was  by  these  poems  that  Shakspere  took  rank  as  a  man 
of  letters.  His  plays  he  did  not  care  to  publish,  and  they 
have  come  down  to  us  almost  by  accident,  with  the  text 
in  a  pitiable  condition  of  uncertainty.  But  there  is  no 
uncertainty  in  the  text  of  the  poems,  which  Shakspere 
saw  through  the  press  with  the  utmost  regard  for  accu- 
racy of  printing.  What  we  find  in  these  lyric  narratives 
is  testimony  to  Shakspere's  own  taste,  when  it  was  un- 
contaminated  by  any  possible  subservience  to  the  spec- 
tators in  the  theater. 

Shakspere  has  been  accused  of  pandering  to  the  likings 
of  his  audience  when  he  puts  poetical  speeches  into  the 
mouths  of  unpoetic  characters;  and  this  has  been  de- 
nounced as  unnatural.  But  this  charge  is  founded  on  a 
misunderstanding  of  the  essential  principle  of  the  poetic 
drama,  of  the  convention  on  which  the  poetic  drama  is 
based.  When  we  go  to  see  a  poetic  drama  we  are  under  an 
implied  contract  to  let  the  author  depart  from  the  prose  of 
everyday  life  and  to  deal  with  creatures  moving  in  the 
more  ethereal  atmosphere  of  poetry.  We  agree  to  allow 
the  poet  to  bring  before  us  a  race  of  beings  whose  habitual 
speech  is  blank  verse  and  who  utter  their  thoughts  with 
all  the  richness  of  expression  which  metaphor  and  simile 
may  lend.  In  like  manner  when  we  go  to  the  opera,  to 
the  music-drama  of  Wagner,  for  example,  we  must  accept 
the  existence  of  a  race  of  beings  whose  habitual  speech  is 
song,  and  who,  in  fact,  have  no  other  possible  means  of 
self-expression;  and  when  we  go  to  a  pantomime  we  have 
to  admit  the  possibility  of  a  race  of  beings  whose  habitual 
speech  is  gesture  and  gesture  alone.  This  is  the  condi- 
tion precedent  to  any  enjoyment  of  pantomime,  of  music- 
drama  and  of  poetic  drama. 

In  Shakspere's  comedies  and  tragedies,  even  the  minor 


SHAKSPERE  AND   HIS  AUDIENCE        307 

characters  are  often  as  exquisitely  poetic  in  phrase  as 
Shakspere  himself.  So  in  Sheridan's  comedies,  even  the 
minor  characters  are  as  elaborately  witty  as  the  author 
himself  could  be  after  due  deliberation.  Sheridan's  sense 
of  humor  let  him  make  fun  of  his  own  practice;  and  in  the 
*  Critic'  he  has  Mr.  Puff  declare  that  he  is  not  in  favor  of 
making  invidious  distinctions  and  of  giving  all  the  fine 
language  only  to  the  better  sort  of  people.  Shakspere 
acted  on  this  principle,  and  in  so  doing  he  is  only  conform- 
ing to  the  necessary  convention  of  the  kind  of  drama  he 
is  composing;  and  it  is  beside  the  question  to  insist  that 
he  is  departing  from  the  facts  of  real  life.  He  is  so 
departing,  of  course,  just  as  the  sculptor  departs  from  the 
facts  of  real  life  when  he  presents  a  figure  in  monochrome, 
or  as  the  painter  when  he  arrests  and  fixes  the  movement 
of  a  wave  breaking  on  the  beach.  In  a  picture  a  wave 
must  be  motionless  and  in  a  statue  there  can  be  only  the 
sole  color  of  the  material,  so  in  the  poetic  drama  all  the 
characters  are  properly  endowed  with  the  gift  of  un- 
failingly poetic  speech. 

IV 

Yet  when  all  is  said  there  are  not  a  few  of  the  passages 
which  we  could  wish  away  from  Shakspere's  plays  and 
which  declare  themselves  as  due  pretty  certainly  to  the 
desire  to  please  the  baser  predilections  of  his  baser  spec- 
tators. The  Elizabethan  playwrights  catered  at  once  to 
the  loftiest  aspirations  of  their  times  and  to  the  lowest 
likings.  As  Professor  Lounsbury  expresses  it  admirably, 
the  drama  was  lofty  for  the  lofty,  for  the  pure  it  was  pure, 
for  the  vulgar  it  was  vulgar.  From  this  point  of  view  it 
did   not  differ  essentially  from   the  modern  newspaper, 


3o8         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

which  puts  forward  the  claim  sometimes  in  express  words, 
more  frequently  in  its  practice,  that  within  certain  limits 
it  must  satisfy  all  classes  of  the  community. "  And  then 
the  critic  honestly  admits  that  "the  most  ardent  admirer 
of  Shakspere  must  concede  that  he  was  not  wholly  free 
from  that  tendency  to  pander  at  times  to  man's  baser 
nature,  which  the  Puritans  regarded  as  the  inherent  vice 
of  all  theatrical  representation. " 

It  was  an  indelicate  age;  and  Shakspere  now  and  again 
lowers  himself  to  regale  the  dirty-minded  with  innuendoes 
that  they  could  roll  under  their  tongues.  But  he  does  this 
far  less  than  most  of  his  rivals;  and  he  confines  his  dirt 
to  the  dialogue.  He  has  very  few  indelicate  situations; 
and  there  are  few  wanton  women  and  few  adulterous 
wives  in  all  his  pieces.  From  his  plays  the  more  objec- 
tionable passages  are  generally  easy  to  excise,  whereas  in 
Fletcher  the  very  theme  of  the  piece  is  frequently  foul, 
and  proper  excision  would  leave  the  play  bleeding  to  death. 
Fletcher  seems  to  have  wanted  to  appeal  more  particu- 
larly to  the  lewd  fellows  of  the  baser  sort,  whereas  Shak- 
spere does  not  so  much  write  down  to  the  mob  as  write 
broad  for  the  crowd,  high  and  low,  desiring  to  make  his 
plays  attractive  to  all  classes.  He  may  pander  on  occasion 
to  the  grosser  element,  whether  this  was  standing  in  the 
yard  or  sitting  on  the  stage;  but  he  is  less  contaminated  by 
this  tendency  than  any  other  dramatist  of  his  day,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  Ben  Jonson,  who  had  a  scholarly 
contempt  for  the  vulgar  herd,  and  who  therefore  com- 
posed his  plays  to  please  himself  rather  than  the  public — 
which  was  therefore  less  pleased  with  them.  It  must  be 
noted  to  Shakspere's  credit  that  he  constantly  cleanses 
the  stories  he  utilizes. 

In  another  way  Shakspere  is  seen  to  be  influenced  by 


SHAKSPERE  AND   HIS  AUDIENCE        309 

his  audience.  He  counts  on  the  moral  callousness  of  his 
spectators  to  enable  him  to  get  the  happy  ending  which 
a  comedy  demands.  He  marries  off  Proteus  and  Claudio 
and  Angelo  to  the  women  who  love  them  and  whom 
they  have  unpardonably  insulted.  To  us  this  is  revolt- 
ing; but  Shakspere  knew  that  his  contemporaries  lacked 
delicacy  of  feeling.  If  the  spectators  could  forgive  these 
despicable  creatures,  it  would  be  on  the  ground  of  their 
own  indifference  to  the  dastardly  acts  of  such  char- 
acters, "because  of  a  moral  bluntness,  which  did  not 
discriminate,"  as  Mr.  Robert  Bridges  suggests,  adding 
that  "Shakspere  took  advantage  of  this,  and  where  his 
plot  demands  a  difficult  reconciliation,  he  assumes  its  pos- 
sibility, and  accomplishes  it  by  a  bold  stroke,  which  any 
manceuvering  would  have  frustrated."  That  is  to  say, 
Shakspere  relies  on  the  moral  dullness  of  his  audience  to 
make  acceptable  an  undeniable  departure  from  psycho- 
logic veracity. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  close  our  eyes  to  the  evi- 
dence which  leads  us  to  believe  that  Shakspere  shared  this 
ethical  callousness,  more  or  less.  It  is  difficult  otherwise 
to  explain  Gloster's  plain-spoken  references  within  ear- 
shot of  Edmund  to  the  circumstances  of  his  begetting 
that  illegitimate  son.  Equally  hard  to  account  for  on  any 
other  hypothesis  is  Faulconbridge's  attitude  toward  his 
own  illegitimacy,  and  especially  the  painful  and  needless 
scene  in  which  his  mother  is  made  to  confess  to  her  son 
that  he  is  not  her  husband's  child.  By  any  standard  of 
taste  these  things  are  execrable;  and  to-day  they  grate 
harshly  on  our  ears,  however  welcome  they  may  have  been 
to  the  coarse-grained  groundlings  of  three  hundred  years 
ago,  or  to  the  equally  vulgar-minded  courtiers.  Other 
scenes   there  are,   although   only  a  few,  which  are  also 


310         SHAKSPERE  AS  A   PLAYWRIGHT 

displeasing  to  us  and  the  blame  for  which  must  be  divided 
between  Shakspere  himself  and  the  men  for  whom  he 
wrote  them. 

Perhaps  we  are  a  little  prone  to  forget  that  Shakspere, 
so  high-minded  at  his  best,  was  also  broad-minded,  as 
Moliere  was.  He  has  the  relish  for  the  earthy  that  we 
find  in  Rabelais  and  in  Montaigne.  He  liked  the  raw 
realities  of  life,  and  he  saw  no  need  to  hide  this  liking,  as 
we  are  wont  to  do  to-day.  He  was  no  Puritan  himself, 
and  he  was  not  writing  for  the  Puritans.  Indeed,  it  is 
one  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  that 
the  Puritans  kept  away  from  the  theater,  and  thereby 
deprived  the  main  body  of  playgoers  of  the  moral  leaven 
that  might  have  helped  to  raise  its  tone  or  at  least  to  have 
acted  as  a  counterbalancing  influence.  Already  the  non- 
conformist conscience  was  making  itself  felt,  and  it  was 
withdrawing  from  the  theater  the  more  sober  and  serious 
element  of  the  English  people.  It  is  always  bad  for  the 
drama  when  it  cannot  appeal  to  the  people  as  a  whole, 
when  it  strives  to  attract  only  certain  restricted  classes. 
The  full  effect  of  the  Puritan  withdrawal  was  not  felt 
until  the  Restoration,  when  the  comic  playwrights  were 
without  any  restraining  influence  and  when  the  stage  be- 
came a  moral  desert,  as  though  the  theater  had  been 
erected  in  one  of  the  cities  of  the  plain,  Sodom  or  Go- 
morrah. Under  Elizabeth,  and  even  under  James,  the 
drama  did  not  lower  itself  to  this  degraded  level.  Yet 
the  seeds  of  the  deadly  flowers  we  find  in  Wycherly  and 
Congreve  were  sown  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  Moral 
callousness,  infrequent  in  Shakspere,  is  common  in  many 
of  his  contemporaries  and  blatant  in  many  of  his  suc- 
cessors. 


SHAKSPERE  AND  HIS  AUDIENCE       311 


Shakspere  was  not  only  deprived  of  the  steadying  force 
which  might  have  been  exerted  if  he  had  had  to  reckon 
with  the  Puritans  as  an  integral  component  of  his  audi- 
ence, he  was  also  without  the  support  of  any  competent 
criticism.  Whatever  printed  discussion  of  the  principles 
of  dramatic  art  there  might  be  in  England  in  his  day  was 
academic;  it  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Italians  of 
the  Renascence,  who  despised  the  existing  theater  which 
they  knew  and  proclaimed  a  return  to  the  theater  of  the 
Romans  and  the  Athenians,  about  which  their  knowledge 
was  inadequate  and  inaccurate.  Jonson  agrees  with  Sid- 
ney in  thinking  scorn  of  the  plays  which  pleased  the  peo- 
ple and  in  pouring  contempt  upon  the  dramatic  form 
which  had  arisen  spontaneously  on  the  English  stage. 
Jonson  does  his  best  to  write  his  plays  in  accord  with  what 
he  believed  to  be  the  classical  standard;  and  he  was  de- 
rided when  at  last  he  published  them  as  his  works.  Plays 
were  not  works,  since  they  were  not  reckoned  to  be  litera- 
ture; rather  were  they  dismissed  as  a  kind  of  acted  jour- 
nalism, wholly  unworthy  of  critical  consideration. 

That  is  to  say,  there  was  a  total  divorce  between  the 
theory  of  the  drama  and  its  practice.  What  the  critics 
discussed  was  drama  of  a  kind  which  did  not  exist  in  the 
language,  and  never  was  to  exist;  and  the  drama  which 
did  exist  expanded  and  developed  without  either  help  or 
hindrance  from  criticism.  The  playwrights  rejected  the 
accepted  critical  theory  and  reacted  from  it.  They  went 
on  their  own  way  to  seek  their  own  salvation  in  their  own 
fashion.  That  there  were  certain  obvious  advantages  in 
this  state  of  affairs  is  indisputable.  The  playwrights 
could  experiment  freely  without  fear  of  an  adverse  criti- 


3i2         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

cism  any  more  condemnatory  than  that  under  which  the 
whole  body  of  their  writings  already  rested.  But  so  large 
a  liberty  is  rarely  wholesome  for  the  practitioners  of  any 
art.  Furthermore,  the  absence  of  any  formal  dramatic 
criticism  was  accompanied  by  the  absence  of  a  critical 
attitude  on  the  part  of  the  audience.  The  spectators  knew 
what  they  liked — but  "so  do  the  beasts  of  the  field. "  In 
the  main  the  taste  of  the  public  was  sound,  but  it  was  not 
delicate  and  it  was  not  discriminating.  It  enjoyed  with- 
out knowing  or  caring  why  it  enjoyed.  The  playwright 
could  only  guess  at  the  gross  effect  of  his  work.  He  had 
no  one  to  gage  what  he  had  done,  to  weigh  it,  to  measure 
it,  to  sift  the  tares  from  the  wheat. 

Shakspere  was  wholly  without  the  solid  support  which 
Moliere  found  in  his  later  years  in  Boileau,  who  most 
approved  the  most  ambitious  efforts  of  his  friend,  inter- 
preting them  to  the  public  and  stimulating  the  playwright 
to  dare  his  best.  In  like  manner,  two  centuries  later, 
Sarcey  sustained  Augier  and  the  younger  Dumas;  his 
critical  code  was  mainly  deduced  from  their  practice;  and 
he  sympathized  with  their  endeavors,  acting  as  an  inter- 
mediary between  them  and  the  public,  to  whom  he  sug- 
gested the  standard  by  which  their  works  were  to  be 
tested.  Criticism  like  Boileau's  and  Sarcey's  is  helpful 
and  stimulating;  it  nerves  an  author  to  his  utmost  en- 
deavor, since  he  is  certain  of  at  least  one  spectator  ca- 
pable of  understanding  his  aim.  Shakspere  stood  alone, 
with  no  single  voice  to  welcome  his  happiest  hits  and  to 
warn  him  when  he  relaxed  his  energy  or  was  satisfied  with 
the  easy  method  and  the  ready-made  device.  Under  these 
circumstances,  the  wonder  is  that  he  should  ever  have 
aspired  and  attained  to  the  severe  beauty  of  ' Othello' 
and  '  Hamlet.' 


CHAPTER  XVII 

1  MACBETH ' 

I 

If  ' Macbeth'  was  written  after  'King  Lear' — which  is 
believed  to  be  the  case,  although  there  is  not  any  cer- 
tainty about  the  chronology — then  it  was  the  latest  of 
Shakspere's  four  great  tragedies;  and  in  nearly  all  the 
plays  which  he  composed  afterward  there  is  an  evident 
relaxing  of  energy,  at  least  in  so  far  as  his  effort  was 
directed  to  the  preliminary  task  of  plotting.  Never  again 
did  he  get  so  interested  in  his  theme  that  he  was  will- 
ing to  put  forth  his  full  power  and  to  make  a  play  as  per- 
fect as  he  could  in  construction  and  in  cumulative  effort. 
Thereafter  there  is  an  obvious  falling  off  in  the  care  with 
which  he  built  up  his  successive  scenes  into  a  coherent 
and  compact  whole.  It  is  true  that  his  last  pieces  are  as 
rich  in  character,  in  poetry  and  in  wisdom  as  any  that 
he  wrote,  perhaps  even  richer  in  wisdom;  but  they  are 
poorer  in  architectural  skill.  It  is  as  though  his  artistic 
ambition  has  begun  to  slacken  and  as  though  he  feels 
it  no  longer  worth  while  to  exert  his  strength  to  the  ut- 
most. It  may  be  that  he  is  wearying  of  his  work  and 
that  he  is  already  looking  forward  longingly  to  his  rest- 
ful return  to  his  native  Stratford.  He  seems  to  be  willing 
to  conform  to  the  changing  preferences  of  the  playgoers 
and  to  be  ready  to  give  them  what  they  wanted,  even  if 
it  was  not  his  best.     What  is  good  enough  for  the  public 

3*3 


3H         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

is  thereafter  to  be  good  enough  for  him.  Why  should  he 
trouble  any  more  to  frame  an  artfully  articulated  plot, 
when  the  spectators  did  not  demand  it,  and  when  they 
had  no  real  appreciation  of  his  hidden  labor?  Here  again 
we  may  discover  the  disadvantage  due  to  the  absence  of 
any  cordial  criticism. 

In  '  Macbeth/  however,  there  is  little  premonition  of 
this  approaching  distaste  for  the  arduous  work  of  con- 
struction. Its  plotting  is  careful  and  conscientious,  even 
if  it  is  not  quite  as  consistent  or  as  skilful  as  that  of 
'Othello.'  'Macbeth5  is  the  shortest  of  all  his  tragedies, 
the  shortest  indeed  of  all  his  plays,  excepting  only  the 
'Comedy  of  Errors.'  It  is  only  half  the  length  of  'Ham- 
let' and  of  'Antony  and  Cleopatra.'  But  it  abounds  in 
"business,"  in  stage-effects,  which  demand  a  longer  time 
in  actual  performance  than  is  required  by  the  mere  utter- 
ance of  the  words.  The  witches  had  many  things  to  do 
besides  the  delivery  of  their  message;  and  the  later  battles 
and  single  combats  might  fill  out  the  customary  period. 
The  brevity  of  'Macbeth'  is  also  in  accord  with  the 
breathless  rapidity  which  Shakspere  imparts  to  the  ac- 
tion. The  play  has  the  rushing  swiftness  of  the  cata- 
ract's rapids  hurrying  resistless  to  the  final  fall. 

For  his  story  Shakspere  goes  again  to  Holinshed.  So 
far  as  we  know,  he  has  not  the  aid  of  any  earlier  piece  on 
the  same  theme,  such  as  helped  him  in  'Hamlet.'  This  is 
not  a  little  to  be  wondered  at,  since  the  historical  narra- 
tive contains  a  complete  tragedy  almost  ready-made  to 
the  hand  of  the  playwright.  The  facts  themselves,  as 
Holinshed  records  them,  seem  to  suggest  a  tragedy  of  the 
Senecan  type — that  is  to  say,  they  present  a  crime  de- 
liberately committed  to  be  ultimately  avenged  by  super- 
natural aid.     And  as  a  result  of  Shakspere's  perception 


'  MACBETH'  3i5 

of  the  possibilities  latent  in  the  pages  of  the  annalist, 
he  is  enabled,  as  Professor  Thorndike  puts  it,  to  unite 
"with  marvelous  dramatic  tact  the  destiny-tragedy  of 
the  Greeks  with  the  villain-tragedy  of  the  Elizabethans." 
1  Macbeth'  is  therefore,  of  all  Shakspere's  tragedies,  the 
one  which  most  closely  approximates  the  Athenian  in  its 
swift  simplicity  of  plot  and  in  its  acceptance  of  fate,  of 
a  doom  due  to  a  supernatural  influence  on  man  and  felt 
to  be  humanly  unavoidable.  Of  course,  this  parallelism 
of  formula  is  not  intentional  on  Shakspere's  part,  and  it 
is  brought  about  only  because  the  theme  he  chooses  here 
leads  him  almost  necessarily  to  this  conformity  with 
Senecan  tragedy. 

Holinshed  gives  us  the  story  of  a  fierce  warrior  who 
rises  to  the  throne  through  blood,  egged  on  by  a  clamor- 
ous wife  and  encouraged  by  the  alluring  prophecies  of 
wizards  and  witches.  To  this  throne  he  has  already  a 
claim,  and  once  seated  on  it  he  reigns  benignantly  for  ten 
years,  during  which  prolonged  period  his  wolfish  instincts 
lie  dormant.  Then  most  unexpectedly  his  evil  nature 
wakes  again,  and  he  returns  to  his  dark  courses,  only  to 
be  overpowered  at  last  by  the  antagonism  he  has  aroused. 
This  is  the  raw  material  Shakspere  works  up  into  dra- 
matic form.  He  begins  by  suppressing  the  ten  years  of 
benevolent  rule  and  by  making  the  events  follow  each 
other  consecutively  and  without  any  undramatic  lapse  of 
time,  during  which  Macbeth  may  seem  to  be  other  than 
he  is.  And  he  modifies  Macbeth  from  the  bloodthirsty 
adventurer  who  hews  his  way  to  the  crown  into  a  wor- 
thy soldier  seduced  into  crime  by  a  temptation  irresistible 
at  the  moment  when  it  presents  itself  to  him.  Thus  the 
deeds  of  the  hero-villain  are  at  war  with  his  original  char- 
acter, and  Shakspere  can  show  us  how  the  deeds  them- 


316        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

selves  bring  about  the  disintegration  of  the  character 
from  its  former  nobility. 

In  Holinshed  Macbeth  has  a  claim  to  the  crown  almost 
as  good  as  Duncan's,  and  Duncan  is  a  negligent  and  cow- 
ardly king.  Shakspere  takes  away  any  pretension  that 
Macbeth  might  have  to  the  throne  while  Duncan  fills  it, 
and  he  changes  the  character  of  Duncan  and  makes  him  a 
good  monarch,  trustful,  gentle  and  kindly,  beloved  by 
his  people.  Thus  the  playwright  clarifies  the  issue  and 
strengthens  it.  Macbeth  is  not  a  cruel  and  reckless  war- 
rior, asserting  his  own  rightful  claim  to  the  crown  and 
thrusting  aside  a  king  unfit  to  rule,  but  a  valiant  soldier 
held  in  high  esteem  by  all,  and  yet  yielding  to  the  temp- 
tation to  murder  a  good  monarch,  that  he  may  seize  the 
scepter  for  himself.  Thus  the  drama  is  not  a  mere  external 
struggle,  a  fight  between  two  pretenders  to  the  throne; 
it  is  internal,  since  it  is  waged  largely  in  the  soul  of 
Macbeth  himself.  Macbeth  as  Shakspere  first  introduces 
him  is  a  character  to  win  sympathy;  he  is  a  loyal  servant 
of  the  king;  he  has  just  won  a  victory  by  his  own  prowess; 
he  is  properly  rewarded  by  promotion.  Macbeth  does 
not  come  before  the  spectators  a  villain  ready-made,  like 
Richard  III,  avowing  himself,  in  an  opening  soliloquy,  for 
the  wicked  man  that  he  is.  It  is  only  in  the  later  scenes, 
after  our  interest  has  been  aroused,  that  we  detect  the 
evil  ambition  which  lurks  within  to  destroy  him  and 
that  we  note  how  the  virus  of  that  ambition  is  working 
in  his  veins. 

Shakspere  adds  whatever  his  own  invention  may  de- 
vise; the  banquet-scene  and  the  sleep-walking  of  Lady 
Macbeth  are  wholly  his,  unsupported  by  any  hint  in 
Holinshed;  and  his  is  also  the  use  of  Macbeth's  own 
castle    as  the   place   where    Duncan    is    murdered.     He 


'MACBETH'  3i7 

takes  from  the  annalist  only  the  things  he  needs  for  his 
play;  he  rolls  into  one  two  expeditions  or  two  battles; 
he  transfers  deeds  from  one  character  to  another;  and 
above  all,  he  condenses  the  duration  of  time. 


II 

'Macbeth'  is  Shakspere's  "best  acting  play,"  Goethe 
told  Eckermann;  "the  one  in  which  he  shows  most  under- 
standing of  the  stage."  This  is  an  opinion  difficult  to 
admit,  in  view  of  the  indisputable  craftmanship  of  '  Romeo 
and  Juliet'  and  'Othello.'  But  even  if 'Macbeth'  may  not 
be  superior  to  these  two  masterpieces  of  stage-craft,  it  is 
to  be  ranked  with  them.  Yet  M.  Maeterlinck  denies  that 
it  is  what  the  French  call  "a  well-constructed  play,"  and 
he  declares  that  from  the  French  technical  point  of  view 
it  "hardly  seems  to  be  a  theatrical  piece."  The  Belgian 
poet  explains  its  structural  defects  as  due  to  the  fact  that 
it  is  a  dramatic  biography,  in  which  the  interest  cannot 
increase,  as  it  ought,  from  act  to  act,  "because  the  action 
must  perforce  follow  the  life  of  the  hero,  and  because  it  is 
rare  for  a  human  life  to  be  disposed  of  as  skilfully  as  a 
tragedy."  He  asserts  further  that  "the  culminating  point 
is  reached  in  the  last  scene  but  one  of  the  third  act,"  and 
that  what  follows,  nearly  half  of  the  whole,  does  not  regain 
the  level  of  the  earlier  portion  except  in  a  scene  or  two, 
such  as  the  sleep-walking.  Yet  he  admits  that  "never- 
theless it  is  a  masterpiece,"  and  that  nowhere  else  "shall 
we  discover  three  acts  of  which  the  tragic  substance  is  so 
compact,  so  gloomily  plentiful,  so  naturally  profound." 

This  last  remark  is  in  flat  contradiction  with  the  earlier 
assertion  that  'Macbeth'  hardly  seems  to  be  "a  theatrical 
piece."     When  we  apply  to  Shakspere's  tragedy  the  tests 


3i8         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

by  which  we  discover  what  the  French  call  "a  well-con- 
structed play" — a  term  which  would  include  the  'CEdipus' 
of  Sophocles,  the  '  Othello'  of  Shakspere,  the  'Tartuffe' 
of  Moliere  and  the  'Ghosts'  of  Ibsen — we  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  perceiving  that  'Macbeth'  easily  attains  to  this 
standard  up  to  the  middle  of  the  story,  or  to  a  little  beyond 
this  point.  And  if  we  are  honest  with  ourselves,  we  must 
confess  that  the  later  third  of  the  action  is  not  sustained 
by  an  equal  expenditure  of  constructive  skill.  As  so  often 
happens  in  the  Elizabethan  drama,  the  story  straggles  in 
the  fourth  act  and  the  movement  is  dragging.  The  inter- 
est is  retarded,  not  to  say  dispersed,  by  episodes,  ably 
handled  in  themselves  and  perhaps  not  irrelevant,  but 
certainly  not  dramatically  essential.  Macbeth  and  Lady 
Macbeth  disappear  while  Lady  Macduff  prattles  with  her 
children  and  while  Macduff  is  told  of  their  taking  off. 
And  the  touching  for  the  king's  evil  has  as  little  artistic 
excuse  as  the  talk  about  the  boy-actors  in  'Hamlet.' 
These  scenes  claim  only  a  languid  attention,  while  we  are 
eager  to  follow  the  fate  of  Macbeth  himself  and  of  his 
wife.  We  feel  that  Shakspere  is  here  momentarily  return- 
ing to  the  fragmentary  method  of  the  chronicle-play.  In 
the  midst  of  these  more  or  less  extraneous  episodes  we 
have  the  marvelous  sleep-walking  of  Lady  Macbeth;  and 
in  the  final  passages  of  the  play  there  is  again  a  sharp 
tightening  of  the  dramatic  intensity. 

Thus  we  see  that  'Macbeth'  is  a  well-constructed  play 
except  in  its  fourth  act  and  in  part  of  the  fifth.  And  in 
its  first  half  its  action  is  built  up  with  a  wonderful  under- 
standing of  theatrical  possibilities.  Marvelously  ingen- 
ious as  may  be  the  opening  scenes  of  'Romeo  and  Juliet,' 
of  'Hamlet'  and  of  'Othello,'  they  do  not  surpass  in  the- 
atrical effect  the  opening  scenes  of  'Macbeth.'     The  expo- 


'MACBETH'  319 

sition  is  highly  interesting  in  itself,  theatrically  and  pic- 
torially,  as  well  as  psychologically;  and  every  successive 
scene  prepares  for  that  which  follows  and  awakens  in- 
creasing expectancy.  First,  we  have  only  a  brief  glimpse 
of  the  witches;  second,  we  are  introduced  to  the  kindly 
king  and  we  hear  the  good  report  of  Macbeth's  bravery; 
third,  we  behold  the  meeting  of  Macbeth  and  Banquo 
with  the  witches  and  we  listen  to  the  triple  prophecy  of 
Macbeth's  future;  fourth,  we  are  made  spectators  of  Mac- 
beth's meeting  with  the  king.  And  then  we  see  Lady 
Macbeth  reading  her  husband's  letter;  and  her  deadly 
purpose  is  revealed  at  once  when  she  learns  that  the  mon- 
arch proposes  to  stay  the  night  with  them.  Immediately 
thereafter  Macbeth  and  his  wife  dally  with  the  fatal 
temptation.  The  king  is  at  the  gates  of  their  castle;  he 
enters,  to  be  greeted  as  their  honored  guest;  and  at  last 
the  charm  is  wound  up. 

The  murder  of  Duncan  is  effected  behind  closed  doors, 
like  the  murder  of  Agamemnon  in  the  tragedy  of  iEschy- 
lus;  and  it  thereby  gains  a  dreadful  horror  wholly  lacking 
in  the  later  visible  assassination  of  Banquo.  It  is  a  deed 
of  darkness  done  in  the  night;  and  Shakspere  has  never 
composed  a  scene  fuller  of  tragic  terror  than  this,  with  its 
successive  appearances  of  Macbeth  and  of  Lady  Macbeth 
from  the  room  where  the  slain  monarch  lies  in  his  blood. 
This  scene  is  startlingly  interrupted  by  the  knocking  at  the 
gate,  repeated  and  prolonged,  while  the  garrulous  porter 
is  delaying.  The  emotional  oppression  is  not  broken 
by  this  chatter  of  the  porter;  in  fact,  the  suspense  is  in 
itself  most  effective  in  the  theater.  The  spectators  wait 
in  wonder  to  learn  who  stands  at  the  door  and  what  will 
follow  when  the  gate  is  opened  at  last.  It  is  Macduff  who 
enters — Macduff,  the  future  avenger  of  the  murder;  and 


32o        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

he  it  is  who  now  discovers  the  assassination.  The  gray 
dawn  is  ushering  in  a  new  day;  and  Macbeth  can  seize 
the  crown,  since  Duncan's  two  sons  steal  away,  under 
suspicion  of  parricide. 

Although  'Macbeth'  is  divided  into  five  acts  in  the 
First  Folio,  its  story  falls  into  three  main  divisions,  of 
which  the  first  is  now  complete — Macbeth  has  cleared 
his  path  to  the  throne.  The  second  consists  of  the  brief 
period  of  his  prosperous  rule  as  a  king,  with  the  slaying  of 
Banquo  and  the  appearance  of  Banquo's  ghost  at  the  ban- 
quet. Then  the  action  wavers  a  little  and  hesitates  before 
stiffening  itself  again  to  set  before  us  the  dread  approach 
of  retribution,  against  which  Macbeth  makes  his  last 
stand,  buoyed  up  by  the  impossibility  of  any  fulfilment  of 
the  two  prophecies  which  seem  to  protect  him.  The 
prophecies  are  fulfilled,  since  Birnam  Wood  is  seen  coming 
to  Dunsinane  and  since  Macduff  was  not  born  of  woman. 
Without  hope,  as  without  cowardly  shrinking,  Macbeth 
faces  Macduff  in  the  final  fight.  Lady  Macbeth  has  gone 
before. 

Except  in  some  of  the  episodes  intercalated  between  the 
second  part  and  the  third,  the  mechanism  of  the  plot  is 
perfect.  The  construction  is  in  accord  with  the  strictest 
law  of  the  French,  as  laid  down  by  Voltaire  in  the  asser- 
tion that  "every  action  in  tragedy,  every  scene,  ought  to 
serve  to  tie  and  to  untie  the  plot;  every  speech  ought  to 
.  be  a  preparation  or  an  obstacle."  And  firmly  put  together 
as  the  story  is,  it  is  only  a  frame  for  the  portrayal  of  Mac- 
beth and  Lady  Macbeth.  It  is  a  story  self-sufficient  on 
the  stage  and  yet  subordinated  to  the  illumination  of  the 
higher  truth  that  character  is  destiny.  The  setting  of  the 
story  is  as  significant  as  its  structure.  Scene  after  scene 
takes  place  at  night,  or  at  least  in  black  gloom.     Duncan 


'MACBETH'  321 

is  murdered  after  midnight;  Banquo's  ghost  appears  at  a 
late  banquet;  Lady  Macbeth  walks  in  her  sleep.  All  is 
dark,  shrouded  in  mystery,  thick  with  fear,  begirt  by  im- 
pending evil.  The  atmosphere  is  dense  with  dismal 
horror.  Omens,  portents,  prophecies,  all  call  upon  the 
audience  to  await  the  dread  fulfilment.  And  the  most 
frequent  words  in  the  dialogue  are  sleep  and  blood  re- 
peated and  insisted  upon.  There  is  little  pathos  and 
infrequent  tenderness.  There  is  no  humor,  save  for  a 
moment  when  the  porter  is  making  ready  to  unlock  the 
gate;  and  here  it  serves  only  to  heighten  the  suspense 
of  the  tragedy.  There  is  no  love-making;  there  are  no 
lighter  passages;  there  is  scarcely  a  single  scene  bathed  in 
the  open  sunlight. 

Above  all,  there  are  the  witches,  not  supernatural 
themselves,  yet  gifted  with  supernatural  knowledge  be- 
cause of  their  unlawful  dealings  with  the  powers  of  evil. 
They  supply  the  external  promptings  to  the  desperate 
deed  Macbeth  may  have  already  conceived  before  he  met 
them,  and  thus  they  give  him  his  excuse  to  himself. 
These  hags  are  theatrically  effective;  but  they  are  more 
than  mere  theatrical  expedients,  since  they  fitly  inhabit 
a  play  as  black  as  this  and  as  thickly  steeped  in  horror. 
Part  of  the  abiding  popularity  of  the  play  is  due  to  Shak- 
spere's  adroit  use  of  the  supernatural,  which  has  perennial 
interest,  since  we  are  forever  wondering  about  the  other 
world  and  its  possible  denizens  and  their  possible  com- 
munications with  us.  We  need  not  ask  ourselves  whether 
Shakspere  himself  believes  in  witches  or  in  ghosts.  It 
is  enough  for  him  that  his  audiences  held  this  belief.  He 
never  hesitates  to  bring  on  the  stage  of  the  Globe  a  tan- 
gible ghost,  still  gory  from  his  assassination;  and  he  is  as 
ready  to  present  the  three  weird  sisters,  whose  prediction 


322         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

came  true.  In  his  plays  prophecies  are  always  accom- 
plished, curses  always  work  out  and  presentiments  are 
always  justified;  to  him  prophecies,  curses  and  presenti- 
ments are  dramaturgic  devices  for  arousing  attention  and 
exciting  expectancy.  Theatrical  tricks  these  are,  and  as 
such  they  are  welcome  to  Shakspere;  but  in  'Macbeth,'  at 
least,  he  strips  them  of  all  their  claptrap  quality  and 
makes  them  integral  elements  of  his  story,  contributing 
powerfully  to  the  special  atmosphere  of  the  play. 

Ill 

'Macbeth'  has  all  the  stage-effectiveness  of  a  popular 
melodrama  which  might  rely  for  success  solely  upon  its 
plot  and  upon  its  picturesque  accessories.  It  is  solidly 
supported  by  that  necessary  element  of  the  drama  which 
lies  outside  literature.  In  its  bare  skeleton  of  action  it 
bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  'Richard  III,'  in  that  it 
sets  forth  the  story  of  a  man  murdering  to  gain  the  throne 
and  then  murdering  to  keep  it,  until  at  last  he  finds  him- 
self face  to  face  with  the  destined  avenger,  the  one  man 
he  has  not  been  able  to  kill  out  of  his  way.  In  'Macbeth' 
a  prophecy  is  worked  out,  and  in  'Richard  III'  it  is  a 
curse.  In  both  plays  the  ghosts  of  the  murdered  return 
to  haunt  the  royal  murderers.  In  fact,  it  would  be  pos- 
sible to  set  side  by  side  in  parallel  columns  a  selection  of 
scenes  from  the  two  plays  to  make  manifest  their  sim- 
ilarity of  story.  And  yet  the  difference  between  them 
is  as  undeniable  as  the  likeness;  and  it  is  due  mainly  to 
the  difference  between  Macbeth  himself  and  Richard. 
Edwin  Booth  has  recorded  a  remark  of  Charlotte  Cush- 
man's  to  the  effect  that  "Macbeth  was  the  father  of  all 
the  Bowery  villains."     If  this  had  been  said  of  Richard, 


'  MACBETH '  323 

there  would  have  been  an  obvious  plausibility  in  the  as- 
sertion. Said  of  Macbeth,  it  may  even  be  true,  if  applied 
merely  to  the  part  as  that  is  often  performed.  But  it  is 
false  when  applied  to  the  character  of  Macbeth  as  we  find 
it  in  Shakspere's  text.  Richard  is  little  more  than  the 
typical  stage-villain,  a  bold,  bad  man  with  no  hint  of 
goodness  in  his  nature.  Macbeth,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
potentially  a  good  man,  even  if  he  descends  at  last  to 
almost  as  many  murders  as  Richard.  'Richard  III'  is 
fundamentally  a  melodrama,  whereas  'Macbeth'  is  a 
true  tragedy,  despite  its  utilization  of  melodramatic 
devices. 

It  is  by  the  superb  delineation  of  the  twin  heroes,  Mac- 
beth and  Lady  Macbeth,  that  the  play  is  lifted  up  from 
the  level  of '  Richard  III.'  These  two,  the  fitly  mated  hus- 
band and  wife,  alone  interest  Shakspere;  and  upon  them 
he  lavishes  his  utmost  care.  The  other  characters  are 
more  or  less  neglected;  they  are  sketched  in  outline  only. 
/Pale  as  they  may  be,  they  are  never  dramaturgically 
feeble,  since  they  are  sturdy  of  will;  Banquo  and  Macduff, 
for  example,  are  as  determined  each  in  his  own  way  as 
Lady  Macbeth  herself.  These  less  important  characters 
are  endowed  with  adequate  vitality  for  their  subordinate 
position;  they  are  as  alive  as  they  need  to  be  to  fulfil 
their  purpose  in  the  play,  wherein  they  are  but  pawns, 
or  at  best  knights  and  bishops,  to  be  taken  by  the  king 
and  the  queen. 

Macbeth  has  the  abundant  energy  which  holds  our  in- 
terest in  the  theater;  and  he  is  not  inferior  to  Richard 
III  in  ruthless  determination.  We  follow  the  successive 
stages  of  his  self-degradation.  Sin  begets  sin;  and  Mac- 
beth goes  from  bad  to  worse,  until  the  bold  soldier  of 
the  opening  episodes,  proud  of  his  prowess,  peremptory 


324        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  impatient,  self-assertive  and  longing  for  command, 
tries  in  vain  to  conquer  his  conscience  as  he  displays 
his  indurated  wickedness.  And  at  the  end  we  behold 
him  involved  in  a  nightmare  of  dreadful  doubt,  driven 
along  by  a  vehement  frenzy,  with  his  brain  unsettled  even 
if  he  is  less  than  half  insane.  Yet  he  never  descends  to 
cowardice,  shattered  as  his  nerves  are  and  dominated  as 
he  may  be  by  superstition.  He  is  alert  of  intelligence  and 
strong  of  will  to  face  foes  and  to  withstand  dangers,  even 
if  he  is  possessed  by  doubts  due  largely  to  his  ever-active 
imagination.  Macbeth's  imagination  is  superior  to  his 
self-control;  he  can  see  before  and  after;  and  this  power 
of  vision  redoubles  his  sufferings.  He  knows  the  better 
way,  even  if  he  has  chosen  the  evil  path;  and  he  is  poign- 
antly conscious  of  the  disintegration  of  his  better  nature. 
It  is  due  to  his  imagination  that  he  is  continually  gnawed 
by  remorse. 

Lady  Macbeth  is  devoid  of  imagination,  and  therefore 
she  is  never  bitten  by  conscience.  She  treads  the  road 
she  has  chosen  without  looking  back.  She  is  matter- 
of-fact,  and  for  her  the  unknown  has  no  terrors.  She 
has  a  hard  cruelty,  due  to  her  insensibility.  She  has  no 
repentance  in  her,  no  regret,  although  her  dreams  are 
troubled  and  she  walks  in  her  sleep,  wondering  that  the 
old  man  should  have  had  so  much  blood  in  him.  Her 
courage  is  as  undaunted  as  her  husband's;  and  in  her  case 
this  is  rooted  in  her  deficiency  of  imagination,  even  if  it 
is  also  strengthened,  as  has  been  suggested,  "by  a  cer- 
tain obtuseness  of  the  nervous  system"  very  unusual  in 
women  and  not  common  in  men.  She  is  the  better  man 
of  the  two,  the  more  resolute  and  the  more  relentless. 
Her  ambition  it  is  which  arouses  the  ambition  of  her 
husband  and  which  makes  them  partners  in  crime.     Her 


'  MACBETH '  325 

determination  is  as  indomitable  as  his;  and  she  is  by 
nature  even  fiercer  and  more  tigerish  than  her  mate. 
They  are  twin  hero-villains  who  fascinate  us  while  we 
abhor  them,  and  who  have  a  stern  persistence  in  evil  that 
we  cannot  despise  even  while  we  detest. 

Mrs.  Siddons,  the  most  famous  impersonator  of  Lady 
Macbeth,  held  that  she  was  a  fragile  woman,  slight  and 
blonde.  This  is  supported  by  only  one  word  in  the  text — 
Lady  Macbeth's  reference  to  "this  little  hand" — and  it  is 
fanciful  because  it  imputes  to  Shakspere  a  habit  of  visu- 
alizing his  characters  independent  of  the  actors  for  whom 
they  were  severally  composed.  The  novelist  sees  his 
creatures  tall  or  short,  dark  or  fair,  and  he  describes  them 
for  his  readers;  but  the  dramatist  is  generally  careful  to 
avoid  any  ascription  of  physical  peculiarities  which  might 
not  be  in  accord  with  those  of  the  performers  who  under- 
take the  parts.  If  Lady  Macbeth  calls  her  hand  "little," 
this  does  not  prove  that  Shakspere  thought  of  her  as  a  little 
woman;  it  may  be  evidence  only  that  the  boy-actor  for 
whom  the  part  was  composed  had  a  small  hand.  This 
boy-actor  was  probably  the  lad  who  had  already  proved 
his  quality  by  the  impersonation  of  Regan;  and  it  is  likely 
that  a  little  later  he  was  intrusted  with  Hermione  in  the 
'Winter's  Tale/  The  other  boy-actor,  who  had  created 
Cordelia,  may  have  appeared  as  Lady  Macduff,  as  he 
may  have  appeared  later  as  Perdita  and  as  Miranda  in 
the  less  tragic  plays  that  Shakspere  was  to  compose  in 
swift  succession.  Macbeth,  of  course,  was  undertaken 
by  Burbage,  while  Macduff  would  fall  to  the  lot  of  the 
actor  who  had  already  performed  Richmond  and  Laertes. 


326         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 


IV 

Stripped  bare,  the  skeleton  of  ' Macbeth'  is  melodrama, 
and  the  play  is  lifted  to  the  higher  plane  of  tragedy  be- 
cause of  the  largeness  and  veracity  of  its  two  hero-villains. 
Shakspere  sustains  the  tragedy  by  his  own  philosophic 
superiority  to  his  characters.  He  sees  his  creatures,  as 
they  are  and  he  stands  outside  them  and  above  them. 
He  uses  them  to  illustrate  the  laws  of  life,  and  he  makes 
us  pity  them  because  he  makes  us  understand  them. 
This  philosophic  pity,  so  it  has  been  aptly  put,  "is  what 
distinguishes  tragedy  from  melodrama,  giving  it  a  beauty 
that  is  not  sentimental  and  a  significance  independent  of 
theatrical  effectiveness."  Shakspere  points  no  moral  and 
he  puts  into  the  play  no  personage  to  utter  his  own  opin- 
ions; yet  the  ultimate  morality  is  visible  enough.  Though 
the  play  is  larger  than  life,  we  cannot  fail  to  find  in  it  the 
abiding  truth  of  life  itself. 

'Macbeth'  tells  to  every  human  soul  the  story  of  that 
soul's  own  experience,  rendered  more  impressive  by  the 
poetry  in  which  it  is  uttered;  and  therefore  Fanny  Kemble 
asserted  that  "it  is  the  truth  itself,  and  not  the  form  in 
which  it  is  presented,  which  makes  the  force  of  its  appeal." 
Then  she  pointed  out  the  appalling  veracity  with  which 
the  insidious  approach  of  temptation  is  represented — 
"its  imperceptible  advance,  its  gradual  progress,  its  cling- 
ing pertinacity,  its  marring  importunity,  its  prevailing 
fascination,  its  bewildering  sophistry,  its  pitiless  tenacity, 
its  imperious  tyranny,  and  its  final  hideous  triumph  over 
the  moral  sense."  Macbeth  himself  is  subdued  to  what 
he  works  in,  and  he  is  never  conscious  of  the  fateful  web 
in  which  he  is  enmeshed.     But  Shakspere  remains  outside 


'MACBETH'  327 

of  his  play;  he  sees  what  is  hidden  from  Macbeth  and  he 
makes  us  see  it. 

And  yet  he  accomplishes  this  marvel  by  magical  means, 
intangible  and  invisible,  since  there  is  in  the  play  itself 
no  declaration  of  his  purpose.  As  Maeterlinck  reminds 
us,  "Macbeth  and  his  wife  never  give  utterance  to  a  lofty 
or  simply  remarkable  thought,  express  no  noble  or  merely 
sentimental  sentiment;  and  the  poet,  on  his  side,  allows 
himself  no  psychological  explanation,  no  moral  reflection. 
And  yet  a  somber  and  sovran  beauty,  a  mysterious  and 
as  it  were  an  immemorial  dignity,  a  grandeur  not  heroic 
and  superhuman,  but  older,  it  seems,  and  profounderthan 
that  which  we  know,  environ  and  imbue  the  whole  drama." 
A  little  later  in  the  same  criticism  Maeterlinck  finds  that 
a  part  of  the  inexplicable  power  of  the  play  springs  from 
the  host  of  images  which  give  vitality  to  the  dialogue. 
No  one  of  Shakspere's  heroes  is  more  richly  endowed  than 
Macbeth  with  the  gift  of  simile  and  metaphor,  with  the 
power  of  imaginative  expression.  His  imagination  is  but 
the  natural  accompaniment  of  his  essential  energy;  and 
even  Hamlet,  though  he  is  more  prone  to  moralize  and  to 
philosophize,  is  not  more  truly  a  poet  in  his  speech  than 
Macbeth.  What  Hamlet  dilutes  in  a  soliloquy  Macbeth 
compresses  into  a  phrase  pregnant  with  meaning  and 
noble  with  poetry.  Nowhere  in  'Macbeth''  do  we  detect 
any  self-conscious  delight  in  playing  with  words  for  the 
beauty  of  their  sound  or  the  charm  of  their  color.  There 
are  no  flowers  of  speech  plucked  for  their  own  sake. 
Poetry  is  now  no  longer  a  mere  accomplishment;  it  is  the 
implement  of  the  playwright,  the  weapon  of  the  drama- 
tist. There  are  few  long  speeches,  but  the  single  lines 
flash  out,  keen  as  a  sword  from  the  scabbard.  There  is 
little  that  lends  itself  to  detached  delivery,  like  the  solilo- 


328         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

quies  of  Hamlet,  the  deliverances  of  Jaques,  or  the  ora- 
tions of  Brutus  and  Mark  Antony.  The  speeches  exist 
only  for  the  sake  of  the  play,  and  they  cannot  be  snatched 
from  the  mouth  of  the  character  who  utters  them  at  a 
special  moment  in  the  progress  of  the  piece.  They  are 
poetry,  but  they  are  drama  also;  and  in  no  other  tragedy 
of  Shakspere  has  he  so  absolutely  disclosed  his  possession 
of  the  double  qualification  demanded  from  the  dramatic 
poet.  Not  only  are  these  sharp  and  glittering  lines  perti- 
nent to  the  situation  and  to  the  person,  they  are  also 
unadorned  and  simple  almost  to  the  verge  of  bareness. 
What  could  be  more  compact  in  itself  or  more  weighty  in 
content  than  this?  "The  raven  himself  is  hoarse  that 
croaks  the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan  under  my  battle- 


ments." 


What  could  be  more  imaginatively  intense  than  Mac- 
duff's despairing  cry?  "  He  has  no  children! '; 

This  imaginative  intensity  of  the  poetry  is  accompanied 
by  a  diminution  in  the  frequency  of  the  riming  couplets, 
which  are  almost  altogether  absent.  When  they  chance 
to  occur  they  serve  only  to  heighten  an  exit-speech; 
that  is  to  say,  rime  is  used  here  only  for  emphasis  and 
solely  for  the  benefit  of  the  actor. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  DRAMATIC-ROMANCES 

I 

'Macbeth'  was  the  latest  of  Shakspere's  major  trage- 
dies; and  only  one  of  the  plays  he  was  to  write  there- 
after, the  ever-delightful ' Tempest,'  is  really  worthy  of  his 
reputation.  His  more  important  work  was  accomplished 
and  his  ambition  seems  to  have  slackened.  It  may  be  that 
he  was  acutely  conscious  of  the  changing  taste  of  the 
playgoing  public,  which  was  steadily  losing  its  relish  for 
idealism  and  which  was  displaying  already  the  liking  for 
coarser  fare  that  was  to  stain  the  stage  of  the  Restora- 
tion. New  men  were  coming  forward  as  playwrights,  men 
who  belonged  to  the  younger  generation  and  who  could, 
therefore,  reflect  its  likings  without  effort.  In  the  twenty 
years  of  Shakspere's  strenuous  productivity  the  writers  he 
had  found  in  possession  of  the  stage  had  disappeared. 
Gone  were  Marlowe  and  Lyly,  Greene  and  Peele  and  Kyd. 
Ben  Jonson  had  shouldered  his  way  forward;  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  had  begun  the  series  of  pieces  which  Fletcher 
was  to  continue  with  other  collaborators  after  Beaumont 
had  retired  from  active  work.  In  the  half-dozen  of  their 
plays  produced  by  Shakspere's  own  company,  the  two 
young  partners  had  elaborated  a  new  type  of  play — the 
type  which  has  been  called  the  dramatic-romance.  The 
germ  of  the  dramatic-romance  may  be  found  in  Shak- 
spere's own  romantic-comedies  and  also  in  his  somber 
tragi-comedies,  in  which  situations  of  a  tragic  possibility 

329 


330        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

are  given  a  happy  ending.  As  Professor  Bradley  has  as- 
serted, the  story  of  these  Elizabethan  plays  "was  intended 
to  be  strange  and  wonderful";  they  were  designed  as 
"tales  of  romance  dramatized,  and  they  were  meant  in 
part  to  satisfy  the  same  love  of  wonder  to  which  the 
romance  appealed." 

But  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  went  far  beyond  Shakspere 
in  their  search  for  the  romantic.  Their  pieces  take  place 
in  a  realm  of  unreality,  where  the  unexpected  always 
happens,  and  where  the  expected  rarely  comes  to  pass. 
Characters  are  suddenly  transformed;  they  change  color 
while  we  are  watching  them;  they  do  instantly  the  very 
thing  they  have  declared  that  they  would  never  do. 
Consistency  is  constantly  sacrificed  to  immediate  effect. 
Striking  situations  are  obtained  only  by  ignoring  the  ele- 
mentary facts  of  human  nature;  and  these  striking  situa- 
tions are  heaped  up  lavishly  and  tumultuously  until  the 
spectator  is  left  gasping  from  the  effort  to  keep  abreast 
of  the  playwright.  Everything  is  sudden  and  startling; 
motives  flame  up  and  die  down  in  the  course  of  a  single 
scene;  there  is  no  attempt  at  plausibility,  still  less  is  there 
any  pretense  of  probability.  Indeed,  the  authors  seem  to 
prefer  the  improbable  as  the  more  surprising  and,  there- 
fore, as  the  more  effective  on  the  stage,  where  strangeness 
was  attractive  in  itself.  Situations  and  characters  alike 
are  intensified,  exaggerated,  carried  to  extremes,  without 
regard  to  verisimilitude  or  propriety. 

Professor  Thorndike  has  acutely  analyzed  the  drama- 
turgic method  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  as  displayed 
in  their  earlier  dramatic-romance.  "They  sought  to  pre- 
sent a  series  of  situations,  each  of  which  should  be  inter- 
esting of  itself  and  should  contrast  with  its  neighbors,  and 
all  of  which  should  combine  sufficiently  to  lead  up  to  a 


THE  DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  331 

startlingly  theatrical  climax.  There  is  nothing  epical 
about  their  construction;  it  is  not  truly  dramatic  like  that 
of  Shakspere's  tragedies  where  the  action  is  in  part  de- 
veloped from  character."  They  tried  to  contrast  as 
many  varying  emotions  as  possible.  "They  never  strove 
to  keep  on  one  emotional  key;  they  sought  for  an  emo- 
tional medley."  In  other  words,  they  were  deliberately 
sacrificing  the  truly  dramatic  to  the  merely  theatric;  and 
by  so  doing  they  succeeded  in  pleasing  the  more  degen- 
erate taste  of  Jacobean  playgoers. 

'Philaster'  is  perhaps  the  most  typical  of  these  dra- 
matic-romances; yet  there  is  a  certain  uniformity  of  plot 
in  most  of  them.  "A  story  of  pure,  sentimental  love  is 
always  given  great  prominence,"  says  Professor  Thorn- 
dike,  "and  this  is  always  contrasted  with  a  story  of 
gross  sensual  passion.  The  complications  arising  from 
this  favorite  contrast  of  love  and  lust  give  an  oppor- 
tunity for  all  kinds  of  incidents  involving  jealousy, 
treachery,  intrigue,  adultery  and  murder.  Each  play  has 
its  idyllic  scene  in  which  the  pure  and  love-lorn  maiden 
plays  her  part,  and  each  play  abounds  in  broils  and  at- 
tempted seductions  and  assassinations.  While  all  this 
commotion  is  being  aroused  in  the  passions  of  individuals, 
thrones  are  tottering  and  revolutions  brewing."  And  in- 
cidentally purely  spectacular  features  are  introduced  now 
and  again,  especially  dances,  borrowed  from  the  court- 
masks. 

To  this  type  of  dramatic-romance,  invented  by  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  belong  the  last  three  pieces  which 
Shakspere  composed  without  the  assistance  of  any  collab- 
orator. Two  of  them,  'Cymbeline'  and  the  'Winter's 
Tale,'  fall  well  within  the  definition  of  the  type;  and  the 
third,  the  'Tempest',  while  it  conforms  less  strictly,  con- 


332         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

tains  not  a  few  of  the  essential  elements  of  the  dramatic- 
romance.  We  need  not  wonder  that  Shakspere  was  will- 
ing to  take  over  a  type  of  play  developed  by  younger 
authors,  who  were  his  friends,  who  were  writing  for  the 
company  to  which  he  belonged,  and  with  one  of  whom  he 
was  soon  to  collaborate.  He  had  never  sought  for  origi- 
nality of  form;  he  had  willingly  accepted  the  framework  of 
the  chronicle-play  from  Marlowe  and  the  formula  of  the 
tragedy-of-blood  from  Kyd.  He  had  used  the  pattern  of 
Lyly  in  one  early  comedy,  and  he  had  borrowed  the 
method  of  Greene  for  another.  He  was  singularly  suscep- 
tible to  the  prevailing  influences  of  the  playhouse;  and  it 
was  natural  enough  that  he  should  avail  himself  of  the 
new  type,  the  theatrical  effectiveness  of  which  must  have 
been  immediately  evident  to  him  as  an  actual  actor  in 
the  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 

It  may  seem  at  first  sight  a  little  surprising  that  an 
elder  playwright  should  thus  be  willing  to  avail  himself 
of  the  labor  of  younger  and  less  important  poets.  But 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  there  are  not  a  few 
precedents  for  this  in  the  history  of  the  drama.  In  the 
later  tragedies  of  iEschylus,  for  example,  we  can  easily 
discover  the  willingness  of  the  older  poet  to  profit  by  the 
dramatic  improvements  due  to  the  younger  Sophocles;  and 
it  is  not  difficult  to  detect  in  certain  of  the  final  tragedies 
of  Corneille,  in  his  'Surena'  more  especially,  the  influence 
of  Racine,  and  a  readiness  on  the  part  of  the  aging  dram- 
atist to  adopt  the  devices  which  had  captivated  the  spec- 
tators of  the  'Iphigenie'  of  his  youthful  rival. 


THE   DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  333 


II 

Of  the  three  dramatic-romances  that  Shakspere  com- 
posed in  imitation  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  'Cymbeline' 
is  the  one  which  most  emphatically  conforms  to  the  type 
as  this  had  been  worked  out  by  the  younger  playwrights. 
It  has  the  merits  and  the  demerits  inherent  in  the  formula. 
It  contains  a  laboriously  complicated  story  abounding  in 
surprises  and  barren  of  reality.  It  is  as  artificial  as  the 
'Philaster'  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  which  indeed  seems 
to  have  served  as  its  immediate  pattern.  It  proves  that 
Shakspere  could  be  on  occasion  quite  as  ingeniously  clever 
as  the  youthful  collaborators  whom  he  was  emulating.  It 
lacks  the  largeness  of  his  great  tragedies  as  it  is  devoid  of 
the  charm  of  his  romantic-comedies.  It  contains  no  char- 
acter, with  the  single  exception  of  its  lovely  heroine, 
Imogen,  who  has  won  a  place  in  the  gallery  of  Shakspere's 
imperishable  figures.  Whatever  its  success  when  it  was 
originally  performed,  it  has  been  unable  to  keep  itself  on 
the  stage,  where  it  is  seen  now  only  at  rare  intervals  and 
only  because  some  actress  of  authority  wishes  to  risk  her- 
self in  the  alluring  part  of  Imogen. 

Of  course  the  play  is  Shakspere's,  after  all  is  said,  and 
there  are  many  passages  that  only  Shakspere  could  have 
written.  When  he  composed  this  piece  he  was  at  his  full 
maturity  as  a  poet,  and  his  wisdom  also  had  ripened  to 
enrich  the  dialogue  of  this  arbitrary  tale.  There  is  no  fall- 
ing off  here  on  the  part  of  the  poet  or  of  the  philosopher, 
even  if  there  is  a  sad  decline  in  the  psychologist  and  the 
playwright.  It  is  astounding  that  after  the  ample  creation 
of  character  which  compels  our  admiration  in  the  great 
tragedies  he  should  have  been  satisfied  with  the  summary 


334        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  perfunctory  outlining  which  we  discover  in  the  per- 
sons who  carry  on  this  dramatic-romance.  Here  he  is 
vying  with  the  inventors  of  the  type,  and  he  outdoes  them 
in  reckless  disregard  of  plausibility  and  of  probability. 
The  characters  have  no  independent  life;  they  are  the 
slaves  of  the  situation.  What  they  say  and  what  they 
do  is  rarely  what  they  would  say  or  do  of  their  own 
volition;  it  is  only  what  they  have  to  say  and  do  to  make 
the  plot  work  and  to  bring  about  the  successive  surprises. 
And  the  decline  in  playmaking  skill  is  equally  evi- 
dent. The  play  is  full  of  feeble  devices  and  of  clumsy 
makeshifts  of  a  simplicity  which  Shakspere  had  long  out- 
grown and  which  he  had  discarded  in  his  nobler  plays, 
both  tragic  and  comic.  The  exposition  is  pitiably  inef- 
fective when  compared  with  the  superb  openings  of  '  Ro- 
meo and  Juliet'  and  ' Hamlet/  of  'Othello'  and  ' Macbeth.' 
Shakspere  sends  on  two  gentlemen,  that  one  of  them  may 
tell  the  audience  what  the  other  can  hardly  fail  to  know 
already.  In  like  manner  Belarius  has  a  long  soliloquy, 
wholly  without  excuse,  and  delivered  solely  to  inform  the 
spectators  who  he  is  himself  and  who  are  the  two  young 
men  who  think  themselves  his  sons.  The  last  dying 
speech  and  confession  of  the  Queen  is  absurdly  out  of 
nature;  and  it  is  reported  to  us  only  to  clear  the  way  for 
the  quick  sequence  of  marvelous  discoveries  and  recog- 
nitions which  tumble  over  each  other  in  the  final  scene. 
The  whole  plot  has  been  articulated  to  lead  up  to  these 
discoveries  and  recognitions,  which  come  one  after  another 
with  impossible  rapidity.  But  despite  all  the  care  and 
trouble  which  has  been  spent  on  this  arbitrary  construc- 
tion, the  resulting  scene  is  quite  ineffective  in  the  acting, 
for  the  plain  reason  that  the  discoveries  and  recognitions 
are  astonishing  only  to  the  characters  in  the  story,  since 


THE  DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  335 

they  reveal  nothing  which  the  spectators  do  not  know 
already.  There  is  no  element  of  expectancy  or  of  sus- 
pense in  the  protracted  series  of  situations.  The  audi- 
ence has  long  foreseen  how  the  play  would  end — indeed, 
how  it  had  to  end;  and  there  is  too  little  interest  in  any 
of  the  characters,  excepting  always  Imogen,  too  little 
reality  in  the  tale  itself,  to  make  the  spectators  care  how 
the  persons  in  the  play  will  take  the  strange  news  which 
is  revealed  to  them  by  character  after  character. 

In  fact,  most  modern  playgoers  would  be  inclined  to 
echo  Matthew  Arnold's  remark  after  he  had  attended  a 
performance  of  'Cymbeline.'  The  British  critic  admitted 
the  charm  of  Imogen,  of  course;  but  he  found  the  play 
itself  "such  an  odd,  broken-backed  sort  of  thing;  it  could 
not  have  happened  anywhere,  you  know.,,  The  very 
skill  with  which  Shakspere  adjusts  his  story  to  the  likings 
of  the  Jacobean  audiences,  whom  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
had  accustomed  to  fantastic  impossibility,  has  recoiled  on 
him  and  made  the  piece  repugnant  to  us  nowadays. 
Especially  repulsive  to  us  is  the  main  theme  of  the  story, 
the  monstrous  wager  wThich  the  husband  makes  with  a 
casual  stranger  about  his  wife's  chastity.  Such  an  out- 
rageous bet  was  all  very  well  in  the  source  where  Shak- 
spere found  it;  and  it  might  have  been  possible  enough  in 
the  Renascence  Italy  of  Boccaccio.  But  its  abhorrent 
grossness  is  inconceivable  under  the  circumstances  in 
which  Shakspere  presents  it.  There  is  an  almost  equal 
lack  of  truth  in  the  interview  between  the  would-be  se- 
ducer and  Imogen.  Coming  with  a  letter  of  introduction 
from  her  husband,  Iachimo  proceeds  at  once  to  take 
away  the  character  of  Posthumus  and  to  make  love  to 
Imogen.  The  psychology  of  the  seducer  is  so  summary 
here  that  it  may  fairly  be  called  childish. 


336         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Even  Imogen  herself,  who  has  found  favor  in  the  eyes  of 
many  dissatisfied  with  the  play  itself,  is  less  subtly  and 
less  ingeniously  presented  than  her  sisters  in  the  ear- 
lier romantic-comedies.  Swinburne  has  called  her  "the 
woman  best  beloved  in  all  the  world  of  song";  and  yet 
in  what  she  actually  does  before  our  eyes  she  is  far  in- 
ferior in  vibrating  femininity  to  Juliet  and  to  Viola.  She 
does  and  she  says  little  more  than  what  she  is  commanded 
to  say  and  to  do  by  the  circumstances  of  the  story  of 
which  she  is  the  heroine.  She  is  painted  for  us,  and  her 
character  is  delineated  largely  by  what  the  other  characters 
say  about  her,  and  only  a  little  by  what  she  says  herself. 
Imogen  is  described  rather  than  self-revealed,  whereas 
Viola  and  Juliet  are  self-revealed  rather  than  described. 
Viola  and  Juliet  need  no  eulogy  from  the  other  characters 
and  no  commentary;  they  are  what  they  are,  and  we 
know  them  by  their  own  words  and  deeds.  Here  again 
Shakspere  is  obeying  his  pattern;  he  is  surrendering  his 
own  sounder  method  of  portraiture  for  the  unsound 
method  brought  into  fashion  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 

Ill 

In  its  external  trappings  the  'Winter's  Tale'  adheres 
closely  to  the  formula  of  the  dramatic-romance.  It  is 
even  more  " broken-backed"  than  'Cymbeline/  since 
there  is  a  gap  of  sixteen  years  between  the  third  act  and 
the  fourth.  It  has  the  same  lack  of  emotional  unity  and  it 
displays  the  same  effort  to  accumulate  disparate  emotions 
and  to  mingle  scenes  of  jealous  rage  with  scenes  of  idyllic 
love-making.  There  is  an  even  more  obvious  endeavor  to 
relieve  the  action  with  extraneous  spectacular  effects:  the 
bear  which  chases  Antigonus  off  the  stage,  the  grotesque 


THE  DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  337 

dance  of  the  twelve  satyrs,  the  more  graceful  revels  of  the 
shepherds  and  shepherdesses,  and  finally  the  picturesque 
bringing  to  life  of  the  statue  of  Hermione — all  deliber- 
ately designed  to  gratify  the  craving  for  pictorial  novelty 
which  had  become  a  marked  characteristic  of  Jacobean 
audiences.  And  in  the  final  scene  there  is  again  a  series 
of  discoveries  and  recognitions,  although  in  the  'Winter's 
Tale'  they  are  more  effective  than  in  'Cymbeline,'  as  well 
as  less  artificially  brought  about.  At  least  one  of  them 
is  still  effective  in  the  theater,  the  return  to  life  of  Her- 
mione. As  Shakspere  has  carefully  kept  the  audience  in 
ignorance  of  her  survival,  there  is  a  shock  of  surprise  when 
the  seeming  statue  starts  to  life  and  steps  down  from  the 
pedestal.  This  clever  effect  gives  to  the  final  episode  of  the 
'Winter's  Tale'  a  vitality  which  has  now  departed  wholly 
from  the  final  episode  of  'Cymbeline.' 

The  story  is  quite  as  abnormal  and  as  far-fetched,  but 
it  has  nothing  quite  as  inacceptable  as  the  wager  of 
Posthumus.  The  hot  jealousy  of  Leontes  is  as  impossible 
as  anything  in  the  preceding  play;  and  it  is  matched  in 
violence  by  the  brutal  attitude  of  Polixenes  to  his  son. 
Yet  on  the  whole  the  'Winter's  Tale'  is  a  far  better  piece 
of  work  than  'Cymbeline.'  It  has  the  full  flavor  of  the 
dramatic-romance,  yet  its  story  is  not  so  artificially  in- 
volved. Its  plot  is  simpler  and  clearer  in  the  perform- 
ance, and  more  appealing,  in  spite  of  the  arbitrariness  of 
the  motiveless  jealousy  which  is  the  mainspring  of  the 
machinery.  It  is  freer  in  its  composition  and  less  obvi- 
ously copied  from  the  model  set  by  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher.  One  might  even  venture  the  suggestion  that 
Shakspere,  having  mastered  the  formula  of  the  dramatic- 
romance,  feels  at  liberty  now  to  employ  it  in  his  own 
fashion.     One  evidence  in  support  of  this  is  the  fact  that 


338         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

certain  of  the  characters  exist  apart  from  the  situations 
and  have  an  independent  life  of  their  own,  like  the  majx>r 
characters  in  Shakspere's  greater  plays.  It  is  true  that 
Leontes  and  Polixenes  are  only  what  the  plot  permits 
them  to  be,  and  that  even  Hermione  is  not  truly  consis- 
tent. Her  noble  eloquence  in  the  trial  scene  does  not  pro- 
ceed from  the  mouth  of  the  same  woman  whose  witty 
banter  has  enlivened  the  opening  episodes.  Frankly  un- 
feminine  also  is  the  forgiveness  of  her  husband  without 
one  word  of  reproach,  although  his  atrocious  conduct  has 
caused  the  death  of  her  only  son,  the  supposed  death  also 
of  her  only  daughter,  and  her  own  seclusion  for  sixteen 
years. 

But  not  a  few  of  the  other  characters  in  the  'Winter's 
Tale*  have  a  vitality  and  a  veracity  lacking  to  the  persons 
who  carry  on  the  plot  of  'Cymbeline.'  Paulina  is  alive 
and  human  and  womanly,  both  in  her  devotion  to  her 
royal  mistress  and  in  her  frank  scolding  of  her  royal  mas- 
ter. She  plays  her  part,  urged  by  her  own  individuality, 
and  she  is  not  the  mere  creature  of  the  story,  a  puppet 
pulled  to  and  fro  by  the  playwright  to  compel  the  forward 
movement  of  the  plot.  And  that  friendly  rascal,  Autoly- 
cus,  is  a  truly  comic  character,  as  rich  in  humor  as  Bottom 
or  Dogberry  (and  probably  written  to  be  acted  by  the 
same  performer,  Armin).  He  is  an  unscrupulous  crea- 
ture— a  gay  thief,  with  a  light  heart  as  well  as  a  light 
hand — a  wily  rogue,  with  a  sense  of  humor;  and  all  the 
scenes  in  which  he  appears  ring  true.  The  second  low- 
comedy  part,  the  old  shepherd's  son,  is  inferior  only  to 
Autolycus.  In  the  First  Folio  he  is  called  frankly  the 
"clown,"  but  he  is  not  merely  a  part;  he  is  a  character. 

Then,  above  all,  there  is  unstrained  romance  in  the 
young  lovers  who   captivate   us   in   the  last  two   acts. 


THE   DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  339 

Florizel  is  the  king's  son  who  loves  the  shepherd's  daugh- 
ter and  who  holds  the  world  well  lost  so  that  she  is  his. 
Perdita  is  the  eternal  maid,  giving  herself  at  once  and 
wholly  to  the  youth  who  woos  her,  knowing  little  about 
him,  except  that  he  loves  her  and  that  she  loves  him,  and 
caring  less.  The  spectators  are  aware  that  she  is  of  royal 
birth,  and  therefore  a  proper  bride  for  her  princely  wooer; 
so  the  audience  follows  the  course  of  true  love  when  it 
fails  to  run  smooth,  sure  that  it  runs  deep  and  certain 
that  it  will  bear  them  at  last  into  the  haven  of  happiness. 
There  is  the  perennial  charm  of  a  spring  idyl  in  this  meet- 
ing and  mating  of  Florizel  and  Perdita.  Shakspere  may 
have  introduced  them  in  accord  with  his  pattern,  to  fol- 
low the  practice  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  in  mingling 
the  gentler  emotions  with  the  more  violent.  But  what- 
ever his  motive,  his  imagination  kindled  when  he  came  to 
compose  these  scenes,  and  he  makes  the  young  couple 
an  example  of  young  love  triumphant  over  every  ob- 
stacle. 

Florizel  may  be  only  what  he  has  to  be,  an  ardent  lover, 
reckless  of  all  but  his  love,  but  Perdita  is  more  than  the 
story  requires.  She  is  one  of  Shakspere's  most  enchanting 
heroines.  She  may  be  belauded  by  other  characters  in 
the  play  and  her  beauty  may  be  praised  by  all  who  gaze 
upon  it.  But  she  is  not  dependent  for  her  charm  upon 
any  eulogy  from  others.  She  speaks  for  herself;  she  is 
what  she  is;  she  is  a  vision  of  joy  steeped  in  poetry, 
a  creature  of  the  springtime  of  life,  an  ideal  of  ineff- 
able maidenhood,  "standing  with  reluctant  feet,  where 
the  brook  and  river  meet."  Her  vocabulary,  her  deli- 
cacy of  speech,  her  delicacy  of  sentiment,  may  be  out 
of  keeping  in  a  girl  who  has  been  brought  up  as  a  shep- 
herd's  daughter.     But   the   spectators    know   her   for   a 


34o         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

king's  daughter;  and  the  poetry  that  falls  from  her  lovely 
lips  is  so  exquisite  that  we  are  prompt  to  suppress  all 
protest.  Less  amply  developed  than  Rosalind  or  Viola, 
Perdita  is  no  less  true  to  the  eternal  womanly.  She 
shares  their  grace  and  their  charm;  and  the  scenes  in  which 
she  appears,  even  if  more  carelessly  composed,  are  wor- 
thy of  comparison  with  the  scenes  in  which  Rosalind  and 
Viola  take  part.  They  are  all  three  creatures  of  exquisite 
fancy;  and  the  last  of  them  proves  that  Shakspere's  hand 
had  lost  nothing  of  its  cunning  in  the  years  that  had 
lapsed.  That  she  falls  from  grace  once  in  the  course 
of  the  play,  and  is  ready  to  desert  her  supposed  father 
in  callous  unconcern  at  the  moment  when  his  life  is 
threatened — this  is  only  what  one  must  expect  in  a 
dramatic-romance.  She  is  lucky  that  she  is  compelled 
only  once  to  lapse  from  the  standard  of  conduct  which 
our  sterner  modern  taste  imposes  even  upon  the  most 
romantic  heroine. 


IV 

The  'Tempest'  is  believed  to  be  the  last  play  that  Shak- 
spere  wrote;  and  it  is  certainly  the  latest  of  his  three 
dramatic-romances.  A  dramatic-romance  it  is  in  its  at- 
mosphere and  in  the  conduct  of  its  plot;  but  here  Shak- 
spere  utilizes  the  framework  of  that  type  to  achieve  a 
beauty  all  his  own.  Externally,  in  the  artificial  structure 
of  its  story,  it  may  be  only  a  dramatic-romance,  but  inter- 
nally it  is  the  most  enchanting  of  fairy-tales.  Where 
'Cymbeline'  and  the  'Winter's  Tale'  frequently  affront 
our  common  sense,  the  'Tempest'  wins  instant  accept- 
ance since  its  fantastic  misadventures  are  due  to  the 
actions  of  a  magician  and  of  his  attendant  spirit  and  are 


THE   DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  341 

thereby  furnished  with  a  logical  cause.  Here  we  have 
added  evidence  of  the  truth  of  Aristotle's  assertion  that 
probable  impossibilities  are  more  acceptable  than  improb- 
able possibilities.  The  play  is  what  the  French  call  a 
f eerie,  a  theatrical  type  of  which  the  latest  poetic  example 
is  the  'Blue  Bird.'  It  has  the  simplicity,  the  naivete,  the 
child's  point  of  view  with  its  easy  welcome  for  the  mar- 
vels of  magic.  Shakspere  is  again  drawing  upon  folklore; 
and  in  the  'Tempest,'  he  utilizes  effects  already  approved 
in  a  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream.'  Ariel  is  own  brother 
to  Puck,  the  Ariel  whom  Prospero  released  from  his  long 
imprisonment  in  a  pine-tree.  Ariel  attires  himself  as  a 
watery  nymph  to  go  invisible,  and  Prospero's  weird  powers 
can  be  exercised  only  when  he  dons  his  conjuring  mantle. 
These  outward  and  visible  signs  were  helpful  to  the  spec- 
tators, whose  taste  in  sorcery  was  as  primitive  as  when 
Marlowe  had  made  Doctor  Faustus  perform  his  marvels 
and  when  Greene  had  displayed  Friar  Bacon  as  a  conjurer 
of  equally  restricted  imagination.  The  wonders  worked 
by  Prospero's  art  are  obvious  enough,  and  therefore 
the  better  fitted  to  the  understanding  of  the  Jacobean 
audience. 

Miranda  is  the  true  heroine  of  a  fairy-tale  and  Ferdi- 
nand is  the  true  prince  who  comes  to  woo  her  in  the  en- 
chanted isle.  These  two  parts  were  plainly  prepared  for 
the  two  performers  who  had  undertaken  Perdita  and 
Florizel.  But  Shakspere  is  now  far  more  interested  in  his 
work.  His  writing  is  spontaneous,  even  if  his  plotting  is 
a  little  labored.  He  creates  characters  with  his  old  gusto 
and  with  all  his  old  understanding  of  human  nature.  It 
is  true  that  there  is  a  usurping  brother  of  the  rightful 
ruler,  a  figure  of  little  more  validity  than  his  predecessor 
in  'As  you  Like  it,'  and  also  that  one  moment  Antonio 
proposes  to  murder  Alonzo,  and  at  another  Caliban  pro- 


342         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

poses  to  murder  Prospero,  because  even  a  fairy-tale,  if  it 
is  also  a  dramatic-romance,  must  be  heightened  by  the 
danger  of  death,  although  the  spectators  always  know  the 
play  to  be  a  comedy  and,  therefore,  refuse  to  take  these 
tragic  perils  seriously.  Most  of  the  characters  have  more 
veracity  than  those  of  the  'Winter's  Tale,'  as  that  in 
its  turn  in  this  respect  excelled  'Cymbeline';  they  are 
more  recognizable  human  beings;  they  are  created  with 
not  a  little  of  the  fresh  energy  of  portraiture  that  rav- 
ishes our  admiration  in  the  great  tragedies  and  the 
great  comedies.  The  comic  group,  especially  Stephano 
and  Trinculo,  are  humorously  realized  and  they  are  not 
mere  clowns;  and  Caliban,  the  misbegotten  son  of  a 
witch,  is  one  of  Shakspere's  most  powerful  creations,  half- 
human  and  half-beast,  an  amazing  projection  of  man's 
lower  nature,  at  once  amusing  in  his  simplicity  and  ap- 
palling in  his  significance. 

It  is  always  dangerous  to  discover  the  dramatist  in 
any  of  his  characters,  yet  there  is  a  strong  temptation  to 
perceive  in  Prospero  something  of  Shakspere  himself,  of 
his  detached  wisdom  in  his  later  years,  just  as  we 
thought  we  caught  a  hint  of  him  earlier  in  the  hot  ardor 
of  young  Romeo  and  again  in  his  manly  maturity  in  the 
questioning  philosophy  of  Hamlet.  And  Shakspere  has 
here  given  us  an  added  proof  of  his  belief  that  women  are 
swift  to  fall  in  love  at  first  sight  and  frank  in  making  ad- 
vances to  the  lover  thus  distinguished.  Miranda  is  as 
void  of  coquetry  as  Juliet  or  Rosalind  or  Viola  and  as 
innocent  in  confessing  her  state  of  heart.  She  has 
scarcely  seen  Ferdinand  before  she  accepts  him  as  her 
destined  mate: 

My  affections 
Are  then  most  humble.     I  have  no  ambition 
To  see  a  goodlier  man. 


THE  DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  343 

She  is  compounded  of  purity  and  grace  and  charm,  and 
it  is  no  wonder  that  Ferdinand  is  taken  captive  by  her 
instantly.  She  is  the  sleeping-beauty  of  the  fairy-tale  in 
an  enchanted  island  instead  of  an  enchanted  castle,  and 
he  is  the  prince  who  comes  to  wake  her  to  life  with  a  kiss. 
We  have  never  a  doubt  that  they  will  live  happy  ever 
after,  as  all  the  loving  young  couples  are  wont  to  do  in 
all  the  other  fairy-tales. 

Shakspere  composes  his  play  in  full  accord  with  the 
requirements  of  the  dramatic-romance,  not  only  in  the 
idyllic  love-scenes  and  in  the  moving  accidents  of  flood 
and  field,  but  also  in  the  abundance  of  purely  spectacular 
elements  taken  over  bodily  from  the  court-masks  and 
yet  here  justified  by  the  atmosphere  of  fairy-land  in  which 
the  whole  story  of  the  ' Tempest'  is  adroitly  involved. 
There  is  the  magical  banquet  brought  in  by  strange  shapes 
dancing  with  salutations,  and  the  dishes  of  this  repast 
disappear  with  "a  quaint  device,"  whereupon  the  strange 
shapes  dance  again  with  mocks  and  mows.  There  is  the 
very  mask-like  interlude  of  the  three  goddesses,  Iris  and 
Ceres  and  descending  Juno.  There  is  the  dance  of  the 
nymphs  and  reapers,  to  match  the  revels  of  the  shepherds 
and  shepherdesses  in  the  preceding  play,  but  not  here  quite 
as  logically  related  to  the  situation.  There  is  the  noise  of 
hunters  followed  by  the  pack  of  dogs  and  hounds  which 
chase  the  distracted  and  befuddled  Trinculo  and  Stephano 
and  Caliban.  There  is  at  the  end  the  magic  circle  into 
which  Prospero  conjures  his  enemies  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  ship's  crew,  so  that  this  piece  may  also  have  its  proper 
series  of  discoveries  and  recognitions. 

The  structure  of  the  fairy-play  as  a  whole  is  a  little 
straggling,  even  if  its  movement  is  fairly  straightforward; 
its  several  contrasting  groups  are  kept  fairly  well  in  hand. 


344         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

Its  action  is  not  in  the  least  broken-backed,  like  those  of 
'Cymbeline'  and  the  *  Winter's  Tale.'  The  opening  scene 
of  the  shipwreck  is  picturesque  in  itself,  and  it  strikes  the 
key-note  of  the  strange  tale  that  is  to  follow.  Immediately 
after  it  comes  the  scene  in  which  Prospero  expounds  the 
situation  to  Miranda.  Prospero's  explanation  is  for  the 
benefit  of  the  audience,  of  course,  and  it  is  a  simple  enough 
form  of  exposition;  but  it  is  not  out  of  nature,  since  Pros- 
pero had  to  tell  Miranda  sooner  or  later,  and  he  had 
good  reason  for  postponing  his  narrative  until  it  was 
necessary.  And  what  Prospero  tells  Miranda  arouses  in 
the  audience  the  interest  of  expectancy,  since  the  specta- 
tors have  seen  the  shipwreck  and  are  ready  for  the  arrival 
of  the  passengers,  to  see  what  will  happen  when  the 
usurper  lands  on  the  isle  of  mystery. 

One  remarkable  peculiarity  of  the  'Tempest'  remains 
to  be  noted.  The  supersubtle  Italian  critics  of  the  Re- 
nascence had  evolved,  partly  from  their  misreading  of  Aris- 
totle and  their  misunderstanding  of  the  Greek  tragedians, 
but  mainly  from  their  own  inner  consciousness,  what  is 
known  as  the  doctrine  of  the  three  unities — of  action, 
time  and  place.  They  asserted  that  every  self-respecting 
play  should  have  only  a  single  action,  that  its  action 
should  begin  and  be  completed  in  a  single  day,  and  that 
this  action  should  be  confined  to  a  single  place.  Logically 
they  should  have  insisted  upon  a  single  spot,  but  they  did 
not.  To  them  a  single  place  might  be  a  palace,  a  town  or 
an  island;  and  the  action,  so  long  as  it  was  restricted  to 
this  place,  might  be  in  different  parts  of  it.  Ben  Jonson, 
for  example,  was  a  tenacious  stickler  for  the  rules  laid  down 
by  the  Italian  theorists,  and  he  boasted  frequently  that 
he  had  observed  them  strictly,  yet  in  '  Every  Man  in  His 
Humour'  his  story  takes  us  to  different  parts  of  London, 


THE  DRAMATIC-ROMANCES  345 

and  evidently  in  his  mind  London  was  only  a  single  place, 
having  sufficient  unity  to  keep  him  within  the  law.  As 
the  doctrine  of  unities  was  strenuously  set  forth  by  Sid- 
ney long  before  Shakspere  began  to  write  plays,  and  as 
Shakspere  was  an  intimate  of  Jonson  himself,  it  is  incon- 
ceivable that  he  should  have  been  ignorant  of  the  theory. 
Yet  he  always  refused  to  accept  it  in  his  plays,  perhaps 
because  he  saw  no  profit  in  imposing  any  fetters  upon 
himself,  perhaps  because  he  knew  that  his  audiences  did 
not  care  whether  he  conformed  or  not,  and  perhaps  be- 
cause he  saw  the  mighty  advantage  his  freedom  gave  him, 
in  that  the  lengthening  of  the  duration  of  the  story  allowed 
him  to  show  character  in  process  of  change,  of  growth 
toward  higher  things  or  of  disintegration  toward  lower. 
Now,  however,  in  the  *  Tempest,'  at  the  very  end  of  his 
career  as  a  playwright,  as  also  in  the  '  Comedy  of  Errors,' 
at  the  very  beginning,  Shakspere  observes  the  three 
unities.  He  gives  us  a  single  action  happening  in  a  single 
day  and  confined  to  a  single  place.  In  the  case  of  the 
'Comedy  of  Errors'  this  conformity  to  the  rule  may  have 
been  accidental,  due  to  his  use  as  a  source  of  a  Latin  play 
on  which  the  unities  were  already  preserved.  But  in  the 
case  of  the  'Tempest'  his  obedience  to  the  Italian  code 
is  plainly  intentional.  The  scene,  though  it  shifts,  never 
departs  from  the  isle  and  the  adjacent  waters  thereof;  and 
the  passage  of  time  is  dwelt  upon  more  than  once,  so  as  to 
call  our  attention  emphatically  to  the  fact  that  the  tale  is 
told  within  less  than  twelve  hours.  This  is  the  more  sur- 
prising, since  Shakspere  had  never  more  boldly  violated 
the  so-called  unity  of  time  than  in  the  immediately  pre- 
ceding play, in  which  the  story  stretches  over  sixteen  years, 
in  total  disregard  of  the  anticipatory  animadversions  of 
Sidney.     The  obvious  explanation   is  that  Shakspere  in 


346         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

this  his  last  play  amuses  himself  by  showing  that  there 
is  really  no  great  difficulty  in  obeying  the  behests  of  the 
Italian  theorists,  even  if  he  does  not  hold  himself  always 
bound  to  obedience,  and  that  he  can  do  it  as  easily  as 
Ben  Jonson — more  easily  even,  since  he  does  not  allow 
his  self-imposed  restrictions  to  hamper  his  liberty.  What- 
ever his  motive,  he  plainly  proves  that  it  was  possible  to 
compose  a  piece  in  which  the  pseudo-rules  are  followed, 
and  in  which  this  servility  to  the  theorists  is  not  allowed 
to  spoil  the  play.  He  is  here  free  from  the  reproach  which 
a  French  critic  urged  when  he  declared  that  he  did  not 
blame  a  certain  dramatist  for  following  rules,  but  he  did 
blame  the  rules  for  causing  that  dramatist  to  write  a  bad 
play. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE  PLAYS  IN  COLLABORATION 

I 

There  are  four  of  the  later  plays  attributed  to  Shak- 
spere  which  are  not  wholly  his  and  in  which  we  detect  the 
work  of  another  hand.  Two  of  these,  'Timon  of  Athens' 
and  ' Henry  VIII,'  appeared  in  the  First  Folio,  published 
only  seven  years  after  his  death  by  his  theatrical  com- 
rades Heming  and  Condell.  *  Pericles'  was  not  included  in 
this  collection;  indeed,  it  gained  admittance  only  after  the 
lapse  of  many  years.  And  the  fourth  of  these  plays,  the 
'Two  Noble  Kinsmen,'  has  never  been  formally  accepted 
as  Shakspere's  work,  although  many  competent  critics 
now  believe  that  he  was  one  of  its  authors  and  that  his 
share  in  it  may  be  as  large  as  his  share  in  '  Pericles.'  It 
was  first  printed  by  itself  in  1634,  ascribed  to  Fletcher 
and  Shakspere;  but  it  did  not  appear  in  the  first  edition 
of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  issued  in  1647. 

Since  these  four  plays  are  not  wholly  Shakspere's  own 
work,  they  must  be  the  result  of  some  sort  of  collabora- 
tion, of  a  literary  alliance  of  one  kind  or  another,  wherein 
he  was  one  of  the  partners.  But  the  more  carefully  the 
plays  are  considered  the  more  evident  it  is  that  they  are 
not  all  four  due  to  the  same  method  of  collaboration. 
There  are,  in  fact,  two  distinct  kinds  of  literary  partner- 
ship, both  of  them  being  carelessly  called  collaboration. 
First  of  all,  there  is  the  true  collaboration,  that  of  Erck- 
mann-Chatrian  and  of  Augier  and  Sandeau,  in  which  the 

347 


348         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

pair  of  authors  really  labor  in  common,  inventing  and  creat- 
ing in  consultation.  They  make  the  plot  together,  they  de- 
velop the  characters,  and  they  assign  to  one  another  the 
more  mechanical  task  of  the  actual  writing.  Then  there  is 
a  second  kind  of  collaboration,  falsely  so  called,  in  which 
the  two  writers  do  not  consult,  and  may  not  even  meet  for 
consultation,  but  in  which  one  of  them  merely  revises  or 
amplifies  or  modifies  what  the  other  has  already  written, 
and  in  this  case  there  is  not  a  genuine  partnership.  And 
under  these  circumstances  it  is  sometimes  possible  to 
separate  the  respective  shares  of  the  two  writers  and  to 
identify  what  the  reviser  has  added  to  the  work  of  the 
inventor.  He  may  have  made  it  better  or  he  may  have 
made  it  worse,  but  in  neither  case  did  he  create  it  origi- 
nally. There  has  been  only  a  mechanical  mixture  of 
their  several  contributions  and  not  a  chemical  union. 
But  in  a  true  collaboration  there  is  a  chemical  union  of 
the  several  contributions,  and  this  forbids  any  successful 
effort  to  identify  the  respective  shares  of  the  several 
collaborators.  At  most  we  may  guess  that  this  passage 
or  that  is  characterized  by  the  peculiar  style  of  one  of 
the  two  partners.  We  may  feel  emboldened  to  surmise 
that  one  of  the  authors  is  plainly  responsible  for  the 
phrasing  of  this  particular  passage;  and  yet  this  very 
passage  which  seems  to  us  so  characteristic  of  one  of  the 
sharers  in  the  enterprise  may  have  been  the  result  of  the 
original  suggestion  of  the  other.  Indeed,  the  major  part 
of  the  invention  of  the  whole,  of  the  creation  of  character, 
and  of  the  finding  of  situations  may  be  due  to  the  partner 
who  did  far  less  than  the  other  in  the  mere  setting  down 
on  paper  of  the  results  of  the  joint  deliberations  in  the 
course  of  which  the  play  took  shape  and  form.  For  in- 
stance, it  is  believed  that  the  actual  writing  of  the  Erck- 


THE  PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        349 

mann-Chatrian  tales  is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  pen  of  only 
one  of  the  two  partners,  and  yet  the  full  share  of  the 
other  in  the  stories  signed  by  both  has  never  been  dis- 
puted. 

If  the  work  is  truly  the  child  of  both  parents  the  en- 
deavor to  discover  the  exclusive  paternity  of  any  special 
episode  must  be  hazardous  in  the  extreme.  It  is  hopeless 
to  seek  to  disentangle  the  specific  contributions  of  the  two 
collaborators  when  they  have  plotted  and  planned  con- 
jointly, and  when  each  of  them  may  have  touched  up  the 
dialogue  here  and  there  in  the  scenes  which  the  other  hap- 
pened to  write.  Who  would  be  so  bold  as  to  risk  a  guess 
at  the  respective  contributions  of  Augier  and  of  Sandeau 
to  the  'Gendre  de  Monsieur  Poirier, '  of  Meilhac  and  of 
Halevy  to  '  Froufrou,'  or  of  Reade  and  of  Taylor  to  '  Masks 
and  Faces'?  It  is  not  difficult  to  judge  these  partners  by 
their  work  outside  of  this  partnership  and  then  to  form  an 
opinion  as  to  what  each  of  them  individually  brought  to 
the  undertaking;  but  these  plays  were  all  of  them  the 
result  of  true  collaboration. 

So  far  as  our  information  goes,  based  on  delicate  and 
protracted  investigation,  the  four  plays  which  are  not 
wholly  Shakspere's  are  examples  of  both  kinds  of  collab- 
oration, the  true  and  the  false.  Two  of  them,  'Henry 
VIII '  and  the  'Two  Noble  Kinsmen,'  are  the  result  of  a 
genuine  partnership  between  Shakspere  and  Fletcher,  in 
which  the  two  authors  worked  together  in  consultation 
over  the  construction  and  the  characterization,  even 
though  they  may  have  divided  the  actual  writing  of  the 
successive  scenes,  in  accordance  with  what  seems  to  have 
been  the  custom  then.  The  other  two  plays,  'Pericles' 
and  'Timon  of  Athens,'  are  examples  of  so-called  collab- 
oration in  which  the  two  writers  are  absolutely  independ- 


35o         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

ent  of  each  other,  never  meeting  in  consultation,  the 
second  of  them  merely  amplifying,  amending  or  injuring 
what  the  first  had  already  composed  without  any  expecta- 
tion that  it  would  ever  pass  into  the  hands  of  another 
playwright  to  be  altered.  At  least,  this  is  the  supposi- 
tion which  seems  best  supported  by  such  evidence  as 
exists.  Of  course,  no  final  opinion  is  possible,  and  any 
opinion  must  be  based  mainly  on  conjecture,  or  at  best  on 
inference. 

II 

In  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  James  Spedding 
made  a  searching  analysis  of  the  style  of  '  Henry  VIII, ' 
and  as  a  result  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  Fletcher  was 
responsible  for  the  majority  of  the  lines.  The  cautious 
application  of  various  tests  convinced  him  that  Shakspere 
had  actually  written  only  half  a  dozen  scenes  himself,  and 
that  the  rest  must  be  ascribed  to  the  pen  of  Fletcher. 
One  of  the  episodes  of  which  Spedding  deprived  Shakspere 
and  enriched  Fletcher  is  that  in  which  Wolsey  bids  a  long 
farewell  to  all  his  greatness.  Any  opinion  of  so  acute  a 
critic  as  Spedding  is  entitled  to  great  weight,  and  since 
he  made  this  suggestion  most  commentators  have  been 
inclined  to  accept  it.  Many  of  them  have  gone  so  far  as 
to  receive  Fletcher  not  only  as  the  phraser  of  this  scene, 
but  also  as  its  sole  inventor.  Yet  there  is  no  necessity 
for  this  extreme  view;  it  is  perfectly  possible  that  the 
actual  writing  of  this  scene  and  of  other  important  scenes 
may  have  been  Fletcher's,  even  though  the  original  inven- 
tion of  them  might  have  been  Shakspere's.  If  the  play  is 
due  to  a  genuine  collaboration,  in  which  the  two  partners 
combined  in  building  up  the  plot,  then  it  is  quite  con- 
ceivable that  scene  after  scene,  in  which  a  trained  ear  may 


THE   PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        351 

detect  the  manner  and  the  vocabulary,  the  rhythm  and 
the  metrical  effects  characteristic  of  Fletcher,  may  never- 
theless have  been  devised  and  outlined  by  Shakspere  and 
turned  over  to  the  junior  collaborator  to  be  written  out. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  possible,  of  course,  that  Fletcher 
invented  those  episodes  as  well  as  phrased  them. 

There  is  at  least  a  little  internal  evidence  to  indicate 
that  certain  portions  of  the  piece  were  composed  under 
Elizabeth,  despite  the  fact  that  the  play  was  not  produced 
until  several  years  after  the  accession  of  James.  That  is 
to  say,  Shakspere  may  have  begun  to  write  another  Eng- 
lish history  on  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII  which  he  laid 
aside  for  the  moment,  and  there  may  have  arisen  later  a 
demand  for  a  play  with  abundant  pageantry,  whereupon 
he  called  in  the  aid  of  the  younger  Fletcher  to  do  the 
most  of  the  actual  writing  of  the  piece  which  he  had  him- 
self earlier  intended  to  complete.  In  talking  over  the  plan 
with  Fletcher  the  younger  man  may  have  made  sugges- 
tions; he  may  have  urged  the  inclusion  of  purely  spectacu- 
lar effects  such  as  he  was  in  the  habit  of  employing  when 
he  was  working  with  Beaumont;  and  in  consequence  of 
these  conferences  the  original  scheme  of  Shakspere  may 
have  been  modified  to  meet  changing  conditions  in  the 
Jacobean  theater. 

No  doubt,  this  is  only  conjecture,  but  conjecture  is  all 
that  is  left  to  us,  since  the  play  is  plainly  not  wholly  Shak- 
spere, so  far  at  least  as  its  style  is  concerned,  and  since  a 
goodly  portion  is  almost  certainly  Fletcher's.  But  the 
conjecture  here  advanced  finds  support  in  a  more  or  less 
parallel  case  in  the  life  of  Moliere.  What  has  here  been 
suggested  as  the  possible  procedure  of  Shakspere  was 
the  precise  procedure  of  Moliere  in  a  similar  situation. 
Louis  XIV  asked  Moliere  to  prepare  a  play  on  a  mytho- 


352         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

logical  plot  in  order  to  utilize  certain  magnificent  sets  of 
scenery  not  otherwise  available;  and  Moliere  dutifully  set 
to  work  to  write  ' Psyche.'  He  had  plotted  the  play  and 
drafted  it  in  prose,  as  was  his  custom,  he  had  even  turned 
a  few  of  the  scenes  into  verse,  when  the  impatience  of  the 
king  forced  him  to  call  on  others  for  help.  Thereupon 
Moliere  engaged  Quinault  to  write  the  lyrics;  and  he 
persuaded  Corneille  to  versify  what  he  had  not  been  able 
to  put  into  verse  himself.  Thus  Corneille  is  responsible 
for  the  actual  words,  for  the  phrasing,  of  the  whole  play, 
excepting  only  the  first  act  of  the  five  and  the  opening 
scenes  of  acts  two  and  three.  But  although  it  was  Cor- 
neille who  clothed  with  words  most  of  the  important 
situations,  none  the  less  is  the  whole  play  fundamentally 
Moliere's,  since  it  was  he  who  had  constructed  the  plot 
and  who  had  conceived  the  characters.  This  we  know, 
because  Moliere  said  it  himself  in  his  preface,  published 
while  Corneille  was  yet  alive.  And  if  this  is  the  way  in 
which  Corneille  came  to  be  the  collaborator  of  Moliere, 
and  if  this  was  the  division  of  the  work  between  them, 
then  it  is  perfectly  plausible,  to  say  the  least,  that  the 
association  of  Shakspere  and  Fletcher  may  have  been  not 
unlike. 

Whatever  their  respective  shares  in  its  authorship, 
'Henry  VIII'  is  not  a  play  in  which  Shakspere  could  take 
pride,  even  if  some  of  its  episodes  rise  to  a  level  of  poetry 
and  of  psychology  to  which  Fletcher  scarcely  could  attain 
unaided.  The  piece  returns  to  the  early  type  of  chronicle- 
play,  in  which  the  king  from  which  it  takes  its  title  is  not 
the  most  salient  or  the  most  dramatic  character.  In 
some  of  Shakspere's  histories,  '  Henry  V,'  for  example,  the 
appealing  personality  of  the  monarch  serves  to  give  a 
semblance  of  unity  to  the  action;  but  in  'Henry  VIII' 


THE   PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        353 

there  is  little  attempt  at  coherence  of  construction.  The 
interest  is  sustained  by  no  central  struggle;  indeed,  such 
interest  as  there  may  be  is  scattered  over  a  variety  of 
characters.  The  string  of  scenes  shows  us  successively  the 
fall  of  Buckingham,  the  fall  of  Queen  Katharine,  the  fall 
of  Wolsey  and  the  threatened  fall  of  Cranmer;  and  it 
strays  aside  to  make  us  witness  of  the  coronation  of  Anne 
and  the  christening  of  Elizabeth.  It  is  a  panorama  rather 
than  a  play,  a  set  of  moving  pictures  rather  than  a  drama. 
It  brings  forward  a  heterogeny  of  historic  figures,  only  two 
of  which  really  start  to  life,  Wolsey  and  Katharine. 

The  story  being  more  or  less  amorphous,  its  authors  did 
not  trouble  to  provide  an  alluring  exposition;  and  the  open- 
ing scene  exists  chiefly  to  permit  a  description  of  the  Field 
of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,  an  epic  passage  which  has  little  or 
no  bearing  on  anything  that  is  to  follow.  In  like  manner 
Buckingham's  dying  speech  is  wholly  extraneous,  even 
if  it  is  a  noble  specimen  of  rhetoric.  Wolsey  looms  large 
for  a  while,  only  to  vanish  in  the  second  act;  and  his 
farewell  speech,  beautiful  as  it  is  in  feeling  as  well  as  in 
phrasing,  is  not  altogether  in  keeping  with  the  character 
as  it  has  been  impressed  upon  us  in  the  earlier  acts,  just 
as  the  Hermione  of  the  final  act  of  the  'Winter's  Tale'  is 
not  quite  consistent  with  the  Hermione  of  the  first  act. 
Whether  Fletcher  wrote  this  speech  of  Wolsey's  or  not,  it 
has  the  kind  of  psychologic  inconsistency  of  which  he 
was  often  guilty  in  the  pieces  that  we  know  to  be  his. 

The  main  attraction  of  the  play  in  the  actual  play- 
house must  be  sought  in  its  abundant  spectacular  accom- 
paniments. There  are  no  single  combats  and  no  set 
battles  like  those  with  which  Shakspere  enlivened  his 
earlier  histories;  but  to  make  up  for  this  abstinence  there 
are  half  a  dozen  other  devices  for  appealing  to  the  eyes 


354         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  ears  of  Jacobean  playgoers.  In  the  first  act  there  is  a 
ball  to  which  the  king  comes  with  his  friends,  unmasking 
to  take  part  in  the  dance;  in  the  second  act  there  is  the 
paraded  pomp  of  a  solemn  state  trial;  in  the  fourth  act 
there  are  the  coronation  procession  of  Anne  and  the  con- 
trasting dumb-show  which  peoples  the  perturbed  dream 
of  the  stricken  Katharine;  and  in  the  fifth  act  there  is  a 
meeting  of  the  royal  council,  followed  by  the  ceremony  of 
the  christening  of  Elizabeth.  No  spectator  could  deny 
that  the  promise  of  the  prologue  was  kept: 

Those  that  come  to  see 
Only  a  show  or  two,  and  so  agree 
The  play  may  pass,  if  they  be  still  and  willing 
I'll  undertake  may  see  away  their  shilling 
Richly  in  two  short  hours. 

Ill 

The  spectacular  trappings  of  the  'Two  Noble  Kins- 
men' are  fewer  than  those  of  'Henry  VIII,'  perhaps  even 
fewer  than  in  Shakspere's  dramatic-romances,  the  'Winter's 
Tale'  and  the  'Tempest.'  Yet  they  are  abundant  enough, 
and  they  have  evidently  been  inserted  intentionally  to 
captivate  the  eyes  and  ears  of  the  Jacobean  spectators 
who  were  now  accustomed  to  expect  these  external  effects. 
The  play  opens  with  Hymen  and  certain  nymphs  attend- 
ing the  wedding  of  Theseus  and  Hippolyta;  in  the  third 
act  there  is  the  prolonged  duel  of  the  two  heroes;  and  in 
the  fifth  act  there  are  three  stately  altars  and  three  sump- 
tuously appareled  knights;  and  ingenious  mechanical  de- 
vices cause  the  vanishing  of  a  hind  from  a  blazing  altar, 
the  appearance  of  a  rose-tree  with  a  single  rose,  the  falling 
of  this  rose,  followed  by  the  descending  of  the  tree  itself. 
There  is  also  in  the  first  act  a  battle  off  stage;  and  in  the 


THE   PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        355 

fifth  act  there  is,  also  off  stage,  the  long  combat  of  Pala- 
mon  and  his  two  comrades  with  Arcite  and  his  two  com- 
panions. The  cries  of  this  combat  are  overheard  by  the 
audience  and  its  vicissitudes  are  reported  to  the  characters 
on  the  stage,  very  much  as  Rebecca  describes  to  Ivanhoe 
the  changing  fortunes  of  the  fight  he  cannot  behold  with 
his  own  eyes. 

There  is  a  subplot  setting  forth  the  sentimental  misfor- 
tunes of  a  jailer's  daughter  who  goes  mad  in  feeble  imita- 
tion of  Ophelia,  and  this  subordinate  action  is  useless, 
trivial  and  uninteresting.  The  main  plot,  dealing  with 
the  jealous  rivalry  of  the  two  noble  kinsmen,  is  uncon- 
vincing; it  is  not  skilfully  put  together;  and  it  is  made  pos- 
sible only  by  a  sudden  flaming  up  of  jealous  passion,  akin 
to  the  volcanic  eruption  of  Leontes,  and  of  a  sort  common 
enough  in  the  earlier  dramatic-romances  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher.  The  characters  are  loosely  drawn  and  highly 
colored;  they  are  frequently  inconsistent,  and  they  are 
not  vital  enough  to  impress  themselves  on  the  memory. 
There  is  even  an  abhorrent  absurdity  in  the  attitude  of 
the  heroine,  Emilia,  apparently  in  love  with  both  heroes 
equally  and  willing  enough  to  marry  either  of  them.  Dis- 
tinctly repulsive,  because  unwomanly,  is  her  calm  callous- 
ness when  the  one  whom  she  has  accepted  is  unexpectedly 
killed,  whereupon  she  pairs  off  with  the  other  at  once, 
merely  pausing  to  declare  that  the  deceased  bridegroom 
was 

A  right  good  man;  and  while  I  live 
This  day  I  give  to  tears. 

Throughout  the  play  there  is  a  superabundance  of  high- 
flown  eloquence,  especially  in  the  long-drawn  discussions 
of  the  two  toplofty  heroes;  and  there  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  Fletcher  was  not  responsible  for  all  this.     The 


356         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

conduct  of  the  contorted  story  and  the  summary  psy- 
chology of  the  characters  are  also  in  accord  with  Fletcher's 
manner  and  method.  But  certain  scenes  are  plainly  not 
phrased  by  Fletcher;  and  these  scenes  were  composed  by 
another  writer  who  was  familiar  with  the  plot  as  a  whole, 
and  who  therefore  probably  had  a  share  in  its  invention 
and  construction.  The  action  is  artificial  and  unreal,  but 
it  is  not  falser  to  life  or  more  arbitrary  than  the  action  of 
'Cymbeline'  or  of  the  '  Winter's  Tale.'  It  is  perfectly  pos- 
sible that  Fletcher's  collaborator  in  the  construction  and 
his  partner  in  the  actual  composition  may  have  been 
Shakspere,  even  if  the  major  share  in  the  co-operative 
undertaking  was  taken  by  the  younger  man. 

Yet  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Shakspere,  although  he 
had  descended  to  the  level  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
in  dramatic-romances  like  *  Cymbeline'  and  the  '  Winter's 
Tale,'  and  although  he  was  here  only  helping  out  a 
friend  in  the  making  of  a  play  for  his  own  company,  a 
play  of  a  kind  which  then  had  an  assured  popularity — it 
is  difficult  to  believe  that  Shakspere  is  necessarily  the 
other  writer  who  here  aided  Fletcher.  Shelley,  who  was  a 
keen  judge  of  poetry,  even  if  he  lacked  any  special  quali- 
fication for  criticism  of  the  drama,  declared  his  disbelief  in 
Shakspere's  authorship  of  any  word  of  it.  It  is  true  that 
Shelley  seems  to  base  this  opinion  partly  on  the  fact  that 
"the  whole  story  wants  moral  discrimination  and  mod- 
esty"; and  by  this  test  Shakspere  would  be  deprived  of 
'Cymbeline.' 

If  Shakspere  was  the  unknown  partner  whose  hand  has 
been  discerned  in  the  'Two  Noble  Kinsmen,'  all  that  need 
be  said  is  that  he  put  very  little  of  himself  into  the  play. 
The  few  scenes  which  he  may  have  penned  are  not  marked 
by  the  soaring  imagination  or  by  the  verbal  magic  which 


THE   PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        357 

he  discloses  in  his  own  plays.  And  the  play  as  a  whole 
is  devoid  of  the  predominant  characteristic  of  Shakspere 
as  a  dramatist,  the  imperishable  vitality  of  the  persons 
who  people  the  story.  In  this  play  no  single  one  of  the 
characters  starts  to  life  under  our  eyes  to  linger  in  our 
memories  as  an  unforgetable  figure.  And  this  negation 
could  not  be  maintained  in  regard  to  any  of  the  plays 
which  we  believe  to  be  mainly  Shakspere's  own.  Even 
'Cymbeline,'  the  poorest  of  the  pieces  composed  toward 
the  end  of  his  career,  the  least  attractive  in  story  and 
the  most  barren  in  character,  has  at  least  the  captivat- 
ing personality  of  Imogen,  inferior  to  his  finer  heroines, 
no  doubt,  and  yet  possessed  of  a  charm  all  her  own. 


IV 

It  is  this  special  Shaksperian  faculty  of  endowing 
chance  figures  with  enduring  reality  that  leads  us  to 
credit  him  with  a  share  in  'Pericles,'  which  is  otherwise 
as  unworthy  of  him  as  the  'Two  Noble  Kinsmen/  A  cor- 
rupt version  of  'Pericles'  was  issued  in  quarto  in  1609; 
but  the  play  was  not  included  in  the  First  Folio  of  1623, 
nor  in  the  second.  It  does  appear  in  the  Third  Folio  of 
1669,  but  in  company  with  a  group  of  other  plays  no  one  of 
which  is  now  accepted  as  Shakspere's.  Therefore  this  in- 
clusion in  the  Third  Folio  carries  very  little  weight  in  favor 
of  Shakspere's  having  had  a  hand  in  it.  The  reason  why 
he  is  credited  wTith  a  share  in  it  is  chiefly  because  no  other 
contemporary  dramatist  was  capable  of  drawing  Marina, 
and  because  many  of  the  separate  speeches  seem  to  have 
the  true  Shaksperian  quality.  But  even  if  we  are  forced 
to  accept  Shakspere  as  the  writer  of  the  second  half  of  the 
play,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  was  a  partner 


358         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

in  its  original  composition.  The  more  obvious  explana- 
tion is  that  he  did  no  more  than  revise  a  piece  planned 
and  actually  written  by  another  playwright.  That  is  to 
say,  he  improved  it  with  many  poetic  embellishments 
and  with  many  psychologic  subtilties,  just  as  he  had  im- 
proved in  like  manner  the  three  parts  of  'Henry  VI.' 

The  starting-point  of  the  story  is  a  hideous  instance  of 
incest,  unlikely  to  have  attracted  Shakspere  at  any  time; 
and  the  sequence  of  events  that  trails  along  afterward  is 
always  as  puerile  as  it  is  often  ugly.  Out  of  such  stuff  a 
viable  play  could  scarcely  have  been  made  even  by  Shak- 
spere himself  when  he  was  at  the  full  plenitude  of  his 
power;  and  the  unknown  writer  who  originally  sliced  it 
into  scenes  left  it  lifeless,  feeble  and  empty.  There  is  no 
evidence  of  any  dramaturgic  skill;  the  story  is  loose-jointed 
and  long-winded;  it  wanders  wearily  through  time  and 
space;  in  fact,  it  may  not  unfairly  be  described  as  a 
specimen  of  undramatic-romance.  It  is  dilated  by  dumb- 
shows;  and  it  has  for  its  Chorus  the  poet  Gower,  who 
here  plays  the  part  allotted  to  the  expositor  in  the 
medieval  mysteries.  These  devices,  the  dumb-show  and 
the  expositor,  were  already  outworn  and  archaic,  long 
before  the  period  when  the  play  was  produced;  and  they 
prove  that  the  playwright  who  put  the  piece  together  had 
not  kept  pace  with  the  advance  in  dramaturgic  practice. 

The  exact  date  of  the  first  performance  of  'Pericles'  is 
unknown  or  at  least  uncertain.  It  must  have  been  pre- 
vious to  1609,  since  the  play  was  then  published;  and  in 
the  preceding  year  the  piece  had  been  novelized  by  Wil- 
kins,  an  obscure  writer,  who  had  produced  one  or  two 
other  plays  and  who  had  been  an  actor  in  the  company 
to  which  Shakspere  belonged.  The  most  probable  ex- 
planation of  the  authorship  of  the  play  is  that  Wilkins 


THE   PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        359 

wrote  it  while  he  was  a  member  of  the  king's  company, 
and  that  Shakspere  at  the  behest  of  his  comrades  took  it  in 
hand  and  tried  to  put  some  life  into  it.  This  supposition 
is  confirmed  by  a  careful  comparison  of  the  novel  with  the 
play,  since  we  discover  that  Wilkins  did  not  avail  himself 
of  those  finer  passages  in  the  later  acts  of  'Pericles'  which 
we  believe  to  be  due  to  Shakspere.  Wilkins  may  even 
have  prepared  the  novel  after  he  had  left  the  king's  com- 
pany and  before  Shakspere  revised  the  play,  which  the 
original  author  had  sold  to  the  actors,  parting  thereby 
with  all  rights  to  it. 

Yet  the  general  conduct  of  the  story  is  the  same  in  the 
novel  as  in  the  play;  and  this  points  strongly  to  the  con- 
clusion that  Shakspere  accepted  the  complete  plot  of  the 
original  writer,  that  he  made  few  or  no  structural  changes, 
and  that  he  confined  himself  to  a  rewriting  of  the  most  of 
the  third,  fourth  and  fifth  acts,  leaving  the  first  and  sec- 
ond acts  very  much  as  he  found  them  and  retaining  the 
expositor  and  the  dumb-shows.  In  other  words,  he  is  in 
no  sense  responsible  for  the  puerile  plot;  and  all  that  he 
did  was  to  rephrase  certain  episodes  as  he  found  them 
ready  made,  incidentally  giving  life  to  Marina  and  to  one 
or  two  other  characters,  and  purging  away  a  few  of  the 
grosser  details  which  we  may  assume  to  have  been  in  the 
original  play  since  we  find  them  in  the  novel.  The  more 
the  play  is  studied  the  more  likely  this  explanation  ap- 
pears; and  if  we  accept  it,  we  admit  Shakspere  was  not  a 
collaborator  in  the  true  meaning  of  the  word.  He  did  not 
halve  the  labor  of  invention  and  construction,  and  he  did 
no  more  than  touch  up  passages  in  the  dialogue,  modify 
here  and  there  the  motives,  suppress  now  and  again  the 
fouler  and  more  foolish  accessories,  and  on  occasion  invig- 
orate a  character  or  two  incidentally. 


360        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

It  is  simply  inconceivable  that  Shakspere  at  this  stage 
of  his  career,  careless  as  he  might  be  and  even  perfunctory 
in  his  plotting,  should  have  had  any  share  in  the  slov- 
enly construction  of  i  Pericles.'  In  'Cymbeline'  there  is 
wasted  effort  on  an  ineffective  series  of  situations;  but  at 
least  the  effort  itself  is  evident,  whereas  in  *  Pericles'  there 
is  no  sign  of  any  effort,  effective  or  ineffective.  All  is  lax 
and  casual,  except  the  mere  writing  and  also  the  vitalizing 
of  Marina.  What  Shakspere  does  with  the  dialogue  was 
perhaps  what  he  alone  could  do;  but  it  cost  him  the  mini- 
mum of  effort.  It  was  precisely  what  he  stood  ready  to  do 
at  any  time  at  the  behest  of  his  fellow-actors,  whenever 
there  happened  to  be  a  dearth  of  available  material  for 
their  use.  The  demand  for  new  plays  was  imperative 
and  the  supply  was  never  equal  to  it.  And  to  oblige  his 
associates  in  the  theater  cost  Shakspere  little  labor.  It 
was  a  piece  of  task-work,  no  doubt,  but  it  was  not  neces- 
sarily uncongenial,  and  for  him  it  was  easy.  Style  was 
his  and  stately  rhetoric  and  abundant  poetry;  these 
things  he  could  command  at  will  and  without  strain,  and 
they  were  at  the  service  of  his  fellow-sharers  for  the 
asking. 

The  drama  has  ever  its  points  of  contact  with  the 
other  arts;  and  what  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  says  about 
pictures  is  true  also  about  plays.  "There  is  nothing  in 
our  art  which  enforces  such  continual  exertion  and  cir- 
cumspection as  an  attention  to  the  general  effect  of  the 
whole.  It  requires  much  study  and  much  practice;  it 
requires  the  painter's  entire  mind;  whereas  the  parts  may 
be  finished  by  nice  touches,  while  his  mind  is  engaged  on 
other  matters."  In  writing  ' Pericles'  Shakspere  was  only 
finishing  the  parts  by  nice  touches,  and  this  task  did  not 
engage  his  entire  mind. 


THE   PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        361 


V 

Of  the  four  plays  for  which  we  cannot  hold  Shakspere 
wholly  responsible  'Timon  of  Athens'  is  the  one  wherein 
we  find  his  handiwork  most  indisputably  evident.  The 
piece  has  passage  after  passage  that  only  he  could  have 
penned;  and  it  is  vitalized  by  one  character,  Timon  him- 
self, that  only  he  could  have  carried  through  with  the  con- 
sistency and  the  power  which  distinguish  it.  Yet  the 
piece  contains  not  a  few  scenes  which  are  repetitious,  in- 
consistent and  even  contradictory,  and  these  scenes  are 
phrased  with  a  flabbiness  of  style  to  which  Shakspere 
never  sank  even  in  his  most  careless  moments.  The 
weaker  episodes  are  more  feebly  written  than  anything 
in  ' Pericles';  and  the  stronger  scenes  are  more  loftily 
written  than  anything  in  'Henry  VIII.' 

In  the  parts  of  the  play  which  we  have  good  reason  to 
ascribe  to  another  author  there  is  a  constant  shifting  from 
prose  to  verse,  and  from  blank  verse  to  rime,  for  no 
artistic  reason;  and  these  parts  are  structurally  excres- 
cences upon  the  plot.  The  discrepancy  between  the  work 
of  Shakspere  and  that  of  the  other  author  is  unmistak- 
able, and  it  is  far  more  evident  than  in  any  other  of  the 
three  plays  here  grouped  together.  In  ' Henry  \  III'  and 
in  the  'Two  Noble  Kinsmen'  there  are  some  speeches 
which  might  have  been  written  by  either  Shakspere  or 
Fletcher;  but  in  'Timon  of  Athens'  we  are  very  rarely 
in  doubt  as  to  the  division  of  the  scenes  between  Shak- 
spere and  the  other  author.  The  episodes  which  we  assign 
to  Shakspere  are  sealed  with  his  sign-manual,  and  those 
which  we  must  credit  to  the  other  writer  are  absolutely 
devoid  of  any  Shaksperian  quality.     That  is  to  say,  the 


362         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

other  author  was  not  a  disciple  or  follower  of  Shakspere, 
borrowing  his  manner  more  or  less  skilfully  as  Fletcher 
was  wont  to  do. 

While  there  is  substantial  agreement  among  those  who 
have  investigated  the  subject  carefully  as  to  the  division  of 
the  writing  between  Shakspere  and  his  unknown  partner 
in  the  enterprise,  there  is  a  frank  divergence  of  opinion  on 
the  question  whether  Shakspere  or  the  other  writer  is  to 
be  accepted  as  the  original  author  to  whom  we  must 
credit  the  plotting  of  the  piece.  Some  there  are  who  are 
inclined  to  the  theory  that  Shakspere  is  here  doing 
what  he  has  done  in  'Pericles,'  revising  and  improving. 
Others,  in  increasing  numbers,  hold  that  Shakspere  wrote 
the  play  himself,  even  if  he  may  not  have  given  it  the 
final  touches,  and  that  his  work  was  bedeviled  by  some 
unknown  and  very  inferior  writer.  How  Shakspere's 
manuscript  may  have  come  into  the  hands  of  this  other 
author  when  the  play  was  performed  on  the  stage,  if  it 
ever  was  performed,  and  by  what  company  it  was  acted, 
if  by  any — these  are  queries  for  which  our  present  in- 
formation affords  no  answer. 

In  default  of  external  testimony,  recourse  must  be  had 
to  internal.  And  happily  the  play  as  we  have  it,  mis- 
printed as  it  may  be,  provides  helpful  evidence.  The  in- 
genious analysis  of  Doctor  E.  H.  Wright  has  disclosed  the 
significant  fact  that  if  we  drop  out  of  'Timon'  all  that  we 
disbelieve  to  be  Shakspere's  there  remains  a  play  unduly 
brief,  it  is  true,  but  coherent  and  consistent  in  plot,  and 
this  may  be  accepted  almost  as  a  proof  that  Shakspere 
was  the  original  writer.  Doctor  Wright  found  further  sup- 
port for  this  view  in  a  second  significant  fact,  that  all  the 
material  drawn  from  the  several  possible  sources  of  the 
story — Plutarch  and  Paynter,  Lucian  and  an  earlier  uni- 


THE  PLAYS  IN  COLLABORATION        363 

versity  piece  on  the  same  theme — is  contained  in  the  Shak- 
sperian  part  of  the  play,  and  that  these  several  sources  did 
not  furnish  any  hints  to  the  other  writer  who  was  guilty 
of  the  non-Shaksperian  parts.  The  inference  is  irresisti- 
ble that  it  was  Shakspere  who  consulted  the  sources  and 
who  constructed  the  plot,  and  that  the  other  writer  may 
have  cut  out  more  than  one  scene  that  Shakspere  had 
composed,  making  up  for  this  by  interpolating  scenes  due 
of  his  own. 

Even  when  we  disentangle  the  play  which  we  are  thus 
led  to  ascribe  to  Shakspere  we  do  not  discover  a  drama 
of  high  value.  It  contains  the  boldly  painted  figure  of 
Timon  himself,  largely  conceived  and  superbly  handled, 
but  it  is  thin  in  theatrical  effectiveness.  Macready  de- 
clared that  for  the  stage  'Timon'  "was  only  an  incident 
with  commentaries  on  it";  and  he  asserted  further  that 
the  story  is  "not  complete  enough — not  furnished,  I  ought 
to  say — with  the  requisite  varieties  of  passion  for  a  play; 
it  is  heavy  and  monotonous."  It  is  a  parable  rather  than 
a  play;  a  satiric  fable  in  dialogue  rather  than  a  drama. 
The  proof  of  a  play  is  in  the  performance,  and  'Timon  of 
Athens'  has  not  been  seen  on  the  stage  since  a  time  where- 
of the  memory  of  man  runneth  not  to  the  contrary.  And 
it  is  not  only  unfit  for  the  theater,  it  is  untrue  to  the  facts 
of  life;  indeed,  it  is  as  distorted  almost  in  its  misrep- 
resentation of  humanity  as  the  fourth  part  of  'Gulli- 
ver's Travels.'  That  any  community  of  men  and  women 
anywhere  or  anywhen  should  be  composed  exclusively 
of  ungrateful  sycophants  and  of  self-seeking  flatterers  is 
an  extravagant  exaggeration.  Such  creatures  exist,  no 
doubt,  but  there  never  existed  any  world  of  which  they 
were  the  sole  inhabitants. 

Timon  himself,  for  all  his  raving  scorn,  is  not  a  truly 


364         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

heroic  figure,  since  he  lacks  common  sense  both  in  his 
philanthropic  and  his  misanthropic  moods.  He  is  not  a 
great  character  confronted  by  a  great  situation  or  set 
over  against  another  great  character,  as  Moliere  con- 
trasted Alceste  with  Celimene.  Indeed,  Moliere's  han- 
dling of  a  pessimist  is  far  sounder  than  Shakspere's. 
Moliere  may  mean  us  to  like  his  misanthrope,  but  he  ex- 
pects us  also  to  laugh  at  him,  because  Alceste  is  a  comic 
character  after  all,  composed  by  the  author  for  his  own 
acting.  Apparently  Shakspere  desired  us  to  laugh  with 
Timon  and  not  at  him,  even  if  our  laughter  is  as  bitter  as 
his  own.  And  Moliere  avoids  Shakspere's  mistake  of  sur- 
rounding Timon  by  beings  wholly  despicable;  the  asso- 
ciates of  Alceste  are  not  all  of  them  estimable  characters, 
but  they  do  not  fall  much  below  the  average  of  humanity, 
if  at  all.  "The  magnifying  of  contrasts  is  prejudicial  to 
truth  and  dulls  the  interest,"  as  M.  Jusserand  asserts,  add- 
ing that  no  one  can  feel  much  sympathy  for  so  clumsy  a 
benefactor  of  mankind  as  Timon,  "first  a  machine  for 
gifts,  then  a  machine  for  insults,  acting  automatically,  as 
bungling  as  he  is  proud,  assisting  the  poor  only  by  chance 
and  usually  enriching  the  rich,  encouraging  the  cupidity  of 
those  around  him,  and  offering  himself  as  a  plunder  to  all 
comers."  The  intense  passion  of  his  valedictory  impre- 
cations, the  imaginative  energy  of  the  indictment  he  draws 
up  against  all  mankind,  these  display  Shakspere's  incom- 
parable power  as  a  poet;  but  they  must  not  blind  us  to  the 
insufficiency  of  Timon  as  a  character  or  to  the  inadequacy 
of  the  play  in  which  he  is  the  only  sincere  figure. 


THE   PLAYS   IN  COLLABORATION        365 


VI 

In  one  of  his  letters  Stevenson  discussed  the  problem  of 
literary  partnership,  and  he  insisted  strenuously  that  the 
method  he  had  adopted  with  his  stepson  was  the  only 
possible  one — "that  of  one  person  being  responsible,  this 
one  person  giving  the  final  touches  to  every  part  of  the 
work."  In  the  same  letter  he  declared  that  the  immediate 
advantage  of  true  collaboration  "is  to  focus  two  minds 
together  on  the  stuff,  and  to  produce,  in  consequence, 
an  extraordinarily  greater  richness  of  purview,  considera- 
tion and  invention."  It  is  possible  that  Shakspere  and 
Fletcher  focused  their  minds  together  on  the  invention  of 
'  Henry  VIII'  and  of  the  'Two  Noble  Kinsmen,'  but  this 
seems  a  little  unlikely;  and  certainly  neither  play  discloses 
any  extraordinary  richness  of  purview,  consideration  and 
invention.  It  is  possible  again  that  Shakspere  was  the 
one  person  responsible  for  the  final  touches  in  every  part 
of  these  two  plays;  but  this  again  seems  a  little  unlikely. 
And  in  the  two  other  pieces  in  which  we  find  Shakspere's 
work  side  by  side  with  that  of  another  writer  we  feel 
assured  that  the  two  minds  were  not  focused  together, 
and  that  one  mind  bettered  in  'Pericles'  and  botched  in 
'Timon  of  Athens '  what  another  mind  had  separately  com- 
posed. How  much  or  how  little  Shakspere  may  have  con- 
tributed to  'Timon  of  Athens'  or  to  'Pericles,'  to  the  'Two 
Noble  Kinsmen'  or  to  'Henry  VIII,'  may  never  be  known. 

Half  a  score  other  pieces  have  been  attributed  to  Shak- 
spere. Two  or  three  of  these  were  published  in  pirated 
quartos  during  his  lifetime,  with  his  name  on  the  title- 
page.  Half  a  dozen  of  them  were  actually  included  in  the 
Third  Folio;  but  this  inclusion  carries  no  weight  whatever, 


366         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

since  this  volume  did  not  appear  until  1664,  long  after 
the  death  of  Heming  and  Condell,  the  editors  of  the  First 
Folio.  In  one  or  another  of  these  plays,  in  'Sir  Thomas 
More/  for  example,  it  might  be  possible  to  pick  out  a 
passage  or  two  in  which  there  may  be  something  of  Shak- 
spere's  manner.  But  these  passages  are  very  few  indeed, 
and  they  are  discoverable  only  by  the  credulous.  No  one 
of  the  plaj^s  as  a  whole  invites  the  belief  that  Shakspere 
was  truly  a  collaborator  in  its  composition.  No  one  of 
these  plays  contains  any  character  into  which  he  has 
breathed  the  breath  of  life. 

And  this  is  the  final  test,  for  this  life-giving  faculty  is 
the  possession  in  which  Shakspere  is  richer  than  any  other 
dramatist  since  first  men  began  to  tell  stories  in  dialogue 
and  action.  This  faculty  "that  Shakspere  received  from 
nature  overshadows  all  his  other  gifts,"  so  M.  Jusserand 
has  finally  summed  up  his  supreme  quality,  "and  makes 
us  understand  how,  despite  the  changes  of  time,  of 
schools,  of  literary  ideals,  despite  an  accompaniment  of 
enormous  defects  (he  did  nothing  by  halves),  his  fame,  in 
all  lands,  should  have  gone  on  increasing.  It  so  happens 
that  the  quality  usually  the  rarest  is,  in  him,  the  pre- 
dominant one;  more  than  any  poet  of  any  time,  he  is  a 
life-giver.,, 


CHAPTER  XX 

CONCLUSION 

I 

That  our  information  about  Shakspere  himself  and 
about  the  facts  of  his  life  is  as  meager  as  it  is  may  be  a 
benefit  to  his  fame,  since  our  interest  is  now  never  dis- 
tracted from  the  writings  of  the  author  to  the  doings  of 
the  man.  Not  a  few  poets,  more  particularly  Shelley 
and  Musset  and  Poe,  have  suffered  an  obscuration  of  their 
reputations  by  the  very  excess  of  our  information  in  re- 
gard to  relatively  unimportant  episodes  of  their  biog- 
raphies. In  default  of  a  surplusage  of  obtruding  facts 
about  their  careers  Sophocles  and  Shakspere  and  Moliere 
force  us  to  focus  our  attention  steadily  on  their  writings. 

Shakspere  did  not  himself  publish  any  single  one  of  his 
tragedies  or  comedies.  Such  editions  of  his  more  popular 
plays  as  were  printed  during  his  lifetime  were  unauthor- 
ized by  him;  and  apparently  they  were  piratical  publi- 
cations, mere  catchpennies,  hastily  made  up  from  short- 
hand notes  taken  in  the  theater  or  clumsily  pieced  to- 
gether from  the  memories  of  disloyal  performers.  Under 
the  English  law  as  it  was  then,  Shakspere  had  no  redress 
against  the  pirate  publishers,  and  we  can  only  regret  that 
their  predatory  enterprise  did  not  move  him  to  send  forth 
himself  complete  and  corrected  copies  of  his  manuscripts 
as  the  plays  were  actually  acted  in  the  theater.  Despite 
Ben  Jonson's  assertion  that  Shakspere  "never  blotted  out 
a  line,"  it  seems  to  be  fairly  certain  that  he  was  in  the 

367 


368         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

habit  of  working  over  his  plays  and  of  amplifying  them, 
perhaps  for  successive  revivals  and  as  the  membership  of 
the  company  was  modified.  At  least  we  are  justified  in 
believing  this  from  the  fact  that  'Hamlet'  is  far  too  long 
for  the  two  hours'  traffic  of  the  stage,  and  that  therefore 
the  whole  text  as  we  have  it  now  could  never  have  been 
delivered  at  any  single  performance. 

Shakspere,  however,  failed  to  issue  his  plays  himself, 
whatever  his  reasons  may  have  been,  whether  a  desire  to 
keep  the  true  manuscripts  in  the  sole  possession  of  the 
company  in  whose  takings  he  was  a  sharer  or  a  disdain 
for  any  other  appeal  to  the  public  than  that  of  the  play- 
house; and  in  his  ambitious  youth  Shakspere  had  sought 
literary  reputation  only  from  his  narrative  poems.  Even 
the  sonnets  were  not  published  by  him  or  by  his  authority. 
'Venus  and  Adonis'  and  the  'Rape  of  Lucrece'  were 
printed  with  scrupulous  scrutiny  of  the  proofs;  and  the 
purity  of  the  text  of  these  narrative  poems  is  in  flagrant 
contrast  with  the  corruption  of  the  text  of  the  First  Folio 
edition  of  the  plays,  issued  seven  years  after  his  death. 
Although  we  may  find  profit  in  a  study  of  the  quartos,  the 
First  Folio  is,  and  must  be  always,  our  authority,  in  spite 
of  its  haphazard  compilation  and  of  its  numberless  blun- 
ders. So  far  as  we  can  guess,  it  was  printed  mainly  from 
the  manuscripts  in  the  theater,  probably  mangled  by 
cuts  carelessly  made  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  perform- 
ance and  possibly  contaminated  also  by  occasional  al- 
terations and  additions. 

Certain  of  the  plays  are  divided  into  five  acts  in  the 
First  Folio,  although  no  act  division  has  been  indicated  in 
such  quarto  piracies  as  may  have  preceded  them;  but  we 
do  not  know  whether  or  not  this  division  into  acts  was 
due  to  Shakspere  or  to  Heming  and  Condell,  conforming 


CONCLUSION  369 

to  a  later  fashion  established  by  Ben  Jonson.  Certain 
acts  of  certain  plays  are  further  subdivided  into  scenes; 
and  again  we  are  left  in  uncertainty  whether  or  not  Shak- 
spere  had  anything  to  do  with  this;  it  is  now  generally 
believed  that  he  was  in  no  wise  responsible  for  it.  The 
First  Folio  and  many  of  the  quartos  also  contain  precious 
stage-directions  and  indications  of  stage-business,  often 
omitted  or  changed  in  our  modern  library  editions,  but 
invaluable  as  evidence  of  the  stage  conditions  to  which  the 
Elizabethan  playwright  had  perforce  to  conform.  While 
the  division  into  acts  and  scenes,  wherever  it  is  attempted, 
is  probably  the  work  of  the  misguided  editors,  the  stage- 
directions  in  the  First  Folio  are  almost  positively  due  to 
the  dramatist  himself;  and  they  therefore  serve  to  bring 
us  a  little  closer  to  him.  The  devoted  zeal  of  a  host  of 
later  editors  and  commentators  has  purged  the  text  of 
the  obvious  misprints  and  has  elucidated  the  meaning  of 
many  obscure  passages.  These  editors  have,  however, 
allowed  themselves  the  liberty  of  cutting  up  the  acts  into  a 
succession  of  scenes,  in  accord  with  the  several  places 
where  they  supposed  the  action  then  to  take  place;  and 
in  so  doing  they  have  created  a  misleading  and  unneces- 
sary confusion.  But  when  all  is  said  and  when  all  allow- 
ances are  made,  we  have  little  reason  to  quarrel  with  the 
situation  in  which  we  find  ourselves  now  when  we  set 
out  to  see  for  ourselves  just  what  it  is  that  Shakspere  did. 
There  may  still  exist  a  few  seeming  inconsistencies  and  a 
few  apparent  contradictions;  there  may  be  painful  gaps  in 
our  knowledge;  but  these  are  only  a  few  and  they  are  not 
important.  After  all,  we  have  the  plays,  even  if  the  text 
is  not  as  solidly  ascertained  as  we  could  wish;  we  have  the 
histories  and  the  comedies  and  the  tragedies;  and  they 
speak  for  themselves,  alike  on  the  stage  and  in  the  study. 


370         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

While  we  may  not  be  possessed  of  all  we  want,  we  have 
all  we  need.  We  can  weigh  the  plays  themselves,  and  we 
can  ask  ourselves  what  manner  of  man  he  was  who  com- 
posed them.  As  Emerson  asserted,  "Shakspere  is  the  only 
biographer  of  Shakspere'';  and  "we  have  really  the  in- 
formation which  is  material,  that  which  describes  char- 
acter and  fortune,  that  which,  if  we  were  to  meet  the 
man  and  deal  with  him,  would  most  import  us  to  know." 

II 

"In  all  countries  and  in  all  ages  a  really  fine  play  must 
be  a  rarity,"  Lewes  declared,  "since  it  is  a  work  which 
of  all  others  demands  the  greatest  combination  of  powers. 
It  is  not  enough  for  a  man  to  be  a  great  poet,  a  great  in- 
ventor, a  great  humorist,  it  is  not  enough  for  him  to  have 
insight  into  character,  and  power  of  representing  it  in 
action,  it  is  not  enough  for  him  to  have  command  over 
brilliant  dialogue  and  striking  situation — there  must  be 
added  to  these  a  peculiar  instinct  for  dramatic  evolution, 
a  peculiar  art  of  construction  and  ordonnance  which  will 
combine  all  these  qualities  so  as  to  meet  psychological  and 
theatrical  exigencies.  To  be  able  to  invent  a  story  is  one 
thing;  to  tell  it  dramatically  is  another;  and  to  throw  that 
story  into  the  form  of  a  drama  is  a  third  and  still  more 
difficult  achievement." 

That  Shakspere  possessed  the  peculiar  quality  of  the 
playwright  is  generally  acknowledged;  and  it  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  his  best  plays  still  keep  the  stage  after  three 
centuries.  That  he  did  not  always  exercise  this  peculiar 
quality  is  more  frankly  admitted  of  late  than  it  was  a  few 
years  ago;  and  his  occasional  failure  to  exercise  it  is  proved 
by  the  fact  that  more  than  half  of  his  plays  have  been 


CONCLUSION  37i 

unable  to  maintain  themselves  in  the  theater.  He  could 
climb  to  the  loftiest  summits  of  poetry  with  Sophocles, 
and  he  could  also  rival  the  cleverest  ingenuities  of  play- 
making,  such  as  are  revealed  by  Scribe  and  Sardou,  even 
if  he  does  not  always  trouble  himself  to  attain  the  deft 
adroitness  of  these  latter-day  craftsmen  of  the  theater. 

Sometimes  he  takes  an  unworthy  story  and  fails  to  tell 
it  dramatically.  Sometimes  he  leaves  loose  ends,  like  the 
unmotived  jealousy  of  Philip  in  'King  John'  and  like  the 
promised  retaliation  upon  mine  host  of  the  Garter  in  the 
'Merry  Wives.'  Sometimes  he  credits  his  characters  with 
his  own  foreknowledge  and  lets  Malvolio  act  as  though  he 
believed  Olivia  to  be  in  love  with  him  before  the  character 
is  told  of  it,  as  he  also  permits  Oberon  to  anticipate  the 
result  of  a  blunder  that  Puck  is  to  commit  later.  Some- 
times he  puts  beautiful  speeches  into  the  mouths  of  unin- 
spired characters  and  noble  thoughts  into  the  mouths  of 
base  creatures.  He  causes  his  villains  to  proclaim  their 
own  wickedness  to  the  spectators,  so  that  the  least  atten- 
tive of  the  groundlings  might  not  be  in  doubt  as  to  their 
future  misdeeds. 

Regularly  he  conforms  to  the  traditions  and  the  con- 
ventions which  the  Tudor  theater  had  inherited  from  the 
medieval  stage.  The  convention  of  the  mysteries  per- 
mitted several  distant  places  to  be  set  in  view  simultane- 
ously, and  therefore  Shakspere  puts  the  tent  of  Richard  III 
by  the  side  of  that  of  Richmond.  The  tradition  of  the 
moralities  authorized  formal  disputations,  and  Shakspere 
permits  one  character  to  state  a  case  with  eloquent 
amplitude,  to  be  answered  with  ample  eloquence  by  his 
opponent,  hanging  up  the  action,  it  may  be,  but  providing 
the  actors  with  the  opportunity  for  oratory  and  gratifying 
the  spectators  with  the  vicissitude  of  debate.     And  as  on 


372         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  medieval  stage  the  action  was  presented  on  a  neutral 
ground,  which  might  be  anywhere  and  which  was  identi- 
fiable as  a  specific  place  only  when  there  was  a  necessity 
for  localizing  it,  so  Shakspere  lets  his  story  ramble  through 
space,  pausing  for  description  only  whenever  there  was 
need  for  letting  us  know  where  his  characters  are  sup- 
posed to  be.  This  was  proper  enough  on  the  platform- 
stage  of  the  Tudor  theater;  but  it  is  not  a  little  awkward 
upon  the  picture-frame  stage  of  our  modern  playhouse. 

But  even  when  the  playwright  is  lax  in  his  practice  the 
poet  rarely  slumbers.  It  is  true,  as  Professor  Bradley  has 
pointed  out,  that  there  are  "passages  where  something  was 
wanted  for  the  sake  of  the  plot,  but  where  Shakspere  did 
not  care  about  it  or  was  hurried, "  and  "the  conception  of 
the  passage  is  then  distinct  from  the  execution,  and  neither 
is  inspired."  And  the  British  critic  appends  the  apt  com- 
ment that  Shakspere  was  "the  greatest  of  poets  when 
he  chose,  but  not  always  a  conscientious  poet."  Profes- 
sor Bradley  here  suggests  the  distinct  difference  between 
Shakspere,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  devoted 
technicians  like  Milton  and  Pope  and  Tennyson,  who 
are  never  neglectful  of  the  connecting-links  and  who 
are  always  scrupulous  to  bestow  all  possible  finish  even 
upon  the  least  important  passages.  They  are  conscien- 
tious artists  always;  and  Shakspere,  greater  than  any  of 
them  when  he  exerts  his  full  power,  is  occasionally  dis- 
dainful of  the  meticulous  care  which  they  never  failed  to 
give.  He  exhibits  a  lordly  carelessness  as  to  the  logical 
sequence  of  his  figures  of  speech;  and  he  does  not  hesitate 
to  talk  of  taking  up  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles  and  of 
seeking  the  bubble  reputation  in  the  cannon's  mouth. 
An  affluent  genius  is  likely  to  overflow  with  spontaneous 
images,  sometimes  inconsistent.   The  truly  great  poet  is 


CONCLUSION  373 

not  always  a  stickler  for  the  niceties  of  metaphoric  pro- 
priety, and  he  takes  no  pride  in  echoing  the  boast  of  an 
accomplished  craftsman  like  Theophile  Gautier,  that  his 
similes  were  always  in  accord  with  one  another. 

His  style  is  not  learned  or  conscious  like  Vergil's;  rather 
is  it  instinctive  like  Goethe's,  with  little  or  no  mannerism. 
His  mastery  of  rhythm  is  marvelous;  he  abounds  in  fancy, 
and  he  can  be  superb  in  imaginative  energy.  In  the  most 
careless  of  his  plays,  the  least  plausible  in  story,  the  most 
loosely  jointed  in  plot,  the  most  perfunctory  in  character, 
the  poet  is  continually  coming  to  the  aid  of  the  playwright; 
splendor  of  speech  dazzles  us,  and  for  the  moment  even 
blinds  us  to  the  deficiency  of  structure.  With  effortless 
ease  he  illuminates  his  nouns  with  the  unforeseen  but  in- 
evitable adjectives;  and  "one  sentence  begets  the  next 
naturally;  the  meaning  is  all  inwoven,"  as  Coleridge  said. 
"He  goes  on  kindling  like  a  meteor  through  the  dark 
atmosphere." 

Like  Moliere,  he  never  forgets  the  actors,  and  his 
speeches  are  all  framed  for  oral  delivery.  The  lines,  how- 
ever full  they  may  be,  are  clear  also;  and  the  meaning 
constructs  the  rhythm.  As  Emerson  pointed  out,  we  have 
only  to  read  for  the  sense,  and  we  find  ourselves  in  posses- 
sion of  the  meter.  Indeed,  the  ultimate  beauty  of  many 
of  his  noblest  passages  can  be  fully  appreciated  only  when 
they  are  apprehended  by  the  ear;  the  eye  alone  does  not 
capture  all  their  charm. 

His  poetry  is  sustained  and  nourished  by  his  compre- 
hensive capacity  for  observation  and  reflection,  two  qual- 
ities rarely  conjoined  in  equal  degree.  And  in  addition 
to  the  shrewd  sagacity  and  buoyant  wisdom  that  in  him 
marks  the  exercise  of  these  qualities,  there  is,  as  Bagehot 
pointed  out,  "a  refining  element  of  chastened  sensibility 


374         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

which  prevents  sagacity  from  being  rough  and  shrewd- 
ness from  becoming  cold.'*  His  attitude  toward  life,  to- 
ward his  fellow-man,  toward  the  insoluble  problems  of 
existence,  is  always  healthy  and  never  morbid.  He  is 
steadily  sane,  rarely  bitter  and  never  desperately  misan- 
thropic. "All  through  his  works,"  to  cite  Bagehot  once 
again,  "you  feel  you  are  reading  the  popular  author,  the 
successful  man;  but  through  them  all  there  is  a  certain 
tinge  of  musing  sadness  pervading  and  as  it  were  soften- 
ing their  gaiety."  However  little  he  may  have  esteemed 
his  plays,  it  is  obvious  that  he  enjoyed  composing  them. 
They  have  the  spontaneity  of  creation  delightfully  accom- 
plished, without  fatigue  and  with  profound  satisfaction. 
Coleridge  even  went  so  far  as  to  suggest  that  there  are 
"scenes  and  parts  of  scenes  which  are  simply  Shakspere's 
disporting  himself  in  joyous  triumph  and  vigorous  fun 
after  a  great  achievement  of  his  highest  genius." 

Ill 

The  lyric  mood  of  etherealized  idealism  often  points  to 
despair;  but  Shakspere  has  ever  a  vigorous  grasp  on  the 
wholesome  realities  of  life.  However  much  he  may  soar 
aloft,  he  can  always  recover  his  firm  footing  on  the  soil. 
He  has  a  human  earthiness  such  as  we  discover  also  in 
Montaigne;  and  this  helps  to  keep  his  vision  clear  and 
large.  He  disdains  the  pettiness  of  so-called  poetic  justice, 
dear  to  Doctor  Johnson  and  to  other  critics  of  his  cen- 
tury. The  innocent  Ophelia  and  Desdemona  die  through 
no  fault  of  their  own;  the  deceived  Othello  kills  himself; 
the  insane  Lear  flickers  out;  and  the  wicked  Macbeth  is 
killed.  Shakspere's  good  characters  are  often  made  to 
suffer,  and,  like  Cordelia,  they  are  sometimes  doomed  to 


CONCLUSION  375 

death,  even  if  they  have  been  allowed  to  survive  in  the 
story  from  which  Shakspere  is  taking  his  plot.  His  bad 
characters  sometimes  escape  without  punishment,  and  on 
occasion  they  may  even  be  married  off — Proteus  and 
Claudio  and  Angelo  dismissed  without  even  rebuke  to  a 
matrimony  that  should  be  a  real  reward.  Shakspere  has 
no  word  of  reproach  for  Jessica's  unfilial  despoiling  of 
Shylock  or  for  Hamlet's  wanton  murder  of  Rosencranz 
and  Guildenstern. 

Medieval  as  he  often  is  in  his  dramaturgy,  he  was  never 
tempted  to  preserve  the  expositor  who  exists  to  point  the 
moral  of  special  deeds.  He  never  preaches;  and  in  no  one 
of  his  plays  can  we  discover  any  attempt  to  prove  any 
particular  thesis  in  the  domain  of  ethics.  He  is  never 
attracted  to  any  anticipation  of  the  modern  problem- 
play.  We  can  point  out  didactic  passages  here  and  there 
in  his  plays,  the  advice  of  Polonius  to  Laertes,  for  example, 
and  the  counsel  of  the  Countess  to  Bertram;  but  these  are 
only  apt  restatements  of  the  eternal  principles  of  con- 
duct, sometimes  warranted  by  the  situation  itself  and 
sometimes  thrust  in  for  their  own  sake,  because  Eliza- 
bethan audiences  had  a  keen  relish  for  sermons.  These 
passages  of  overt  didacticism  are  infrequent  and  insig- 
nificant— at  least  they  do  not  represent  Shakspere's  at- 
titude toward  the  larger  questions  of  morality. 

This  attitude,  never  denned  by  himself,  has  been  stated 
fairly  enough  by  Goethe.  "I  have  never  considered  the 
practical  result  of  my  works.  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  they  have  done  good,  but  I  have  never  aimed  at  that. 
The  artist  is  called  on  in  his  writings  only  to  realize  his 
idea.  He  takes  on  what  aspect  he  may  in  the  imagina- 
tion of  men;  and  it  is  for  them  to  extract  the  good  and  to 
reject  the  evil.      It  is  not  the  artist's   duty  to  work  on 


376         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  conscience.  He  has  only  to  express  his  own  soul." 
Shakspere  has  a  soul  to  express,  a  soul  far  too  large  for 
the  confining  theory  of  poetic  justice  or  for  the  needless 
task  of  declaring  in  set  phrase  the  moral  that  may  be 
drawn  from  his  works.  But  the  moral  is  there  to  be 
drawn  by  all  who  take  the  trouble  to  think.  Shakspere's 
ethical  doctrines  are  not  formulated  into  precepts;  they 
are  not  condensed  into  a  code  for  instant  quotation;  but 
they  exist,  none  the  less,  and  they  are  immitigably  sound. 
Shakspere  does  not  believe  that  morality  is  something  that 
can  be  put  into  a  play;  on  the  contrary,  he  holds  that  it 
is  something  that  cannot  be  left  out.  With  him,  as  with 
all  true  artists,  morality  is  part  of  "the  essential  rich- 
ness of  inspiration,"  to  borrow  again  the  apt  phrase  of 
Mr.  Henry  James.  He  is  moral  and  profoundly  moral, 
because,  like  Sophocles,  he  "  sees  life  steadily  and  sees  it 
whole." 

In  a  word  his  ethics  are  implicit  rather  than  explicit;  and 
we  must  discover  in  his  dramas  our  own  morality,  each  of 
us  for  himself.  That  is  to  say,  he  has  as  many  morals 
as  his  plays  have  spectators;  and  we  can  find  support  in 
them  as  we  can  in  the  spectacle  of  life  itself.  His  mo- 
rality is  not  to  be  sought  in  specific  instances;  rather  is  it 
in  the  temper  of  the  whole,  in  the  sanity  and  the  serenity 
with  which  he  sets  mankind  before  us  as  he  sees  it.  His 
ethical  influence  is  persuasive  and  abiding;  he  strengthens 
and  he  uplifts;  he  is  never  relaxing  and  emollient.  He 
forces  us  to  face  the  facts  of  life  and  to  see  ourselves  as  we 
are.  By  the  conflicts  he  sets  before  us  on  the  stage  he 
nerves  us  for  the  struggles  of  existence.  He  himself  is  on 
the  side  of  the  angels,  even  if  he  is  ever  reminding  us  of 
the  gorilla  which  lurks  within  us — the  ancestral  gorilla, 
selfish  and  bestial,  avid  of  lust  and  of  blood. 


CONCLUSION  377 

The  outlook  of  Sophocles  is  sadder  than  that  of  Shak- 
spere, and  the  outlook  of  Moliere  is  far  more  sharply 
limited.  By  the  very  fact  that  Shakspere's  imaginative 
energy  is  superior  to  Moliere's  his  morality  is  at  once 
richer  and  sterner.  While  it  is  not  austere  like  that  of 
Sophocles,  it  is  not  content  to  accept  the  precepts  of  the 
tolerant  and  disenchanted  man  of  the  world  with  which 
Moliere  is  satisfied.  Shakspere  is  larger  than  either  the 
great  Greek  tragedian  or  the  great  French  comedian;  and 
because  he  himself  is  larger,  so  is  his  moral  vision  also  at 
once  broader  and  more  penetrating. 

Doctor  Johnson,  holding  that  "it  is  always  a  writer's 
duty  to  make  the  world  better,,,  decided  that  Shakspere 
is  often  derelict  to  his  duty  since  "he  sacrifices  virtue  to 
convenience,  and  is  so  much  more  careful  to  please  than 
to  instruct  that  he  seems  to  write  without  any  moral 
purpose."  And  here,  for  once,  Johnson  is  right;  Shak- 
spere does  write  without  any  moral  purpose.  What  the 
old-fashioned  critic  failed  to  see  is  that  the  ultimate 
morality  of  a  writer  does  not  depend  on  his  purpose,  but 
on  his  truth  to  life,  and  therefore  finally  on  the  sincerity 
of  his  vision.  The  corrective  for  this  petty  criticism  of 
the  eighteenth  century  is  to  be  found  in  the  ampler  view 
never  better  stated  in  the  twentieth  century  than  by 
M.  Jusserand.  "For  compelling  hearts  to  expand,  and 
making  us  feel  for  others  than  ourselves,  for  breaking  the 
crust  of  egotism,  Shakspere  has  among  playwrights  no 
equal.  The  action  on  the  heart  is  the  more  telling,  that 
with  his  wide  sympathies  the  poet  discovers  the  sacred 
touch  of  nature  not  only  in  great  heroes,  but  in  the  hum- 
blest ones;  not  only  in  ideal  heroines,  but  in  a  Shylock 
whom  we  pity,  at  times,  to  the  point  of  not  liking  so 
completely  'the  learned  doctor  from  Padua';  'even  in  the 


378         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

poor  beetle  that  we  tread  upon/  and  we  get  thinking  of 
its  pangs  'as  great  as  when  a  giant  dies.'  The  fate  of  a 
Hamlet,  an  Ophelia,  a  Desdemona,  an  Othello,  carries,  to 
be  sure,  no  concrete  moral  with  it;  the  noblest,  the  purest, 
the  most  generous,  sink  into  the  dark  abyss  after  ago- 
nizing tortures,  and  one  can  scarcely  imagine  what,  being 
human,  they  should  have  avoided  to  escape  their  misery. 
Their  story  was  undoubtedly  written  without  any  moral 
purpose,  but  not  without  any  moral  effect.  It  obliges 
human  hearts  to  meet,  it  teaches  them  pity." 

IV 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  may  be  better  for  Shakspere's 
fame  that  we  have  so  few  details  about  his  life  and  his 
personality,  we  cannot  help  regretting  that  we  do  not 
know  more  about  the  man  himself;  and  we  are  tempted 
to  pore  over  his  works  and  to  peer  into  them  in  the  vain 
hope  of  catching  sight  of  their  author.  Emerson,  for  one, 
was  satisfied  with  the  information  which  the  plays  sup- 
plied; and  he  asserted  that  "so  far  from  Shakspere's  being 
the  least  known,  he  is  the  one  person,  in  all  modern  his- 
tory, known  to  us.  What  point  of  morals,  of  manners,  of 
economy,  of  philosophy,  of  religion,  of  taste,  of  the  con- 
duct of  life,  had  he  not  settled?"  On  the  other  hand, 
M.  Jusserand  contends  that  "few  dramatists  have  allowed 
less  of  their  personality  to  appear  in  their  works.  What 
is  mirrored  in  Shakspere's  plays,  apart  from  all  that  is 
eternal  in  them,  is  his  time  and  his  public,  much  more 
than  his  own  self." 

Yet  these  diverging  opinions  are  not  irreconcilable. 
Even  if  we  had  not  external  evidence,  we  should  be  jus- 
tified in  feeling  that  Ibsen  had  in  a  measure  identified 


CONCLUSION  379 

himself  with  Stockmann,  and  that  Moliere  was  of  a  jealous 
temperament,  because  jealousy  is  the  theme  of  a  large 
proportion  of  his  plays.  Even  if  no  single  passion  re- 
curs again  and  again  in  Shakspere's  plays,  we  can  seize 
on  a  few  at  least  of  his  dominant  convictions;  and  even 
if  there  is  in  all  his  pieces  no  single  figure  for  whom  the 
playwright  finds  a  model  in  himself,  we  may  believe  that 
we  can  catch  successive  glimpses  of  the  author  in  the 
sympathetic  portrayal  of  the  young  Romeo,  of  the  more 
mature  Hamlet,  and  of  the  tolerant  Prospero.  Beyond 
this  we  cannot  go,  for  the  dramatist  does  not  put  himself 
into  his  plays,  even  if  he  cannot  keep  himself  out  of  them 
altogether.  It  is  the  function  of  the  playwright  to  take 
himself  out  of  the  way  and  to  let  his  characters  speak  each 
in  his  own  fashion.  No  dramatist  has  ever  drawn  on  his 
own  early  experiences  as  amply  and  as  openly  as  the  nov- 
elists have  often  done,  as  Dickens  did  in  'David  Copper- 
field,'  Thackeray  in  'Pendennis'  and  Mark  Twain  in  'Tom 
Sawyer';  and  there  we  have  one  of  the  fundamental  dif- 
ferences between  the  art  of  the  story-teller  and  the  art  of 
the  playwright. 

As  a  result  of  this  professional  attitude,  and  perhaps 
also  of  a  personal  reticence  peculiar  to  Shakspere,  we  do 
not  know  his  religion  or  his  politics.  We  are  in  doubt 
whether  he  was  a  Roman  Catholic  or  a  Protestant, 
although  we  have  some  basis  for  believing  that  he  did 
not  like  the  Puritans,  a  lack  of  liking  natural  enough  in  a 
man  practising  a  profession  which  the  Puritans  abhorred. 
There  is  little  or  no  evidence  that  he  had  ever  thought 
seriously  about  politics,  although  we  can  discover  in  his 
dramas  a  contempt  for  mob-rule  and  a  conviction  that  a 
firm  yet  liberal  government  is  best  for  the  state.  At 
least,  the  York-Lancaster  histories  and  the  Roman  plays 


38o        SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

seem  to  reveal  Shakspere's  appreciation  of  the  immediate 
disadvantages  of  the  disorder  due  to  instability  and  to  a 
doubtful  succession  to  the  throne.  But  if  his  religious 
beliefs  and  his  political  convictions  are  not  clearly  re- 
vealed to  us,  there  are  other  beliefs  of  his  and  other  con- 
victions which  do  not  admit  of  doubt. 

He  is  ardently  patriotic,  for  one  thing,  rejoicing  that  he 
was  an  Englishman  and  proud  of  the  deeds  of  his  fellow- 
islanders.  Yet  he  is  emphatically  a  landsman,  with  no 
liking  for  the  sea,  having  ample  realization  of  its  dan- 
gers and  scant  appreciation  of  its  beauty.  He  sets  a  high 
value  on  friendship  between  men.  He  has  little  feeling 
for  home-life,  for  the  intimacy  of  the  hearth.  He  dislikes 
scolding  wives;  he  warns  men  against  marrying  women 
older  than  themselves;  and,  although  he  gives  us  many 
noble  portraits  of  women,  he  has  not  a  single  line  in  praise 
of  the  sex  itself.  Yet  he  apparently  holds  that  the  aver- 
age woman  would  make  a  good  wife — at  least,  we  may 
infer  this,  since  the  bad  wives  who  appear  in  his  plays  are 
very  few  indeed;  even  some  of  his  bad  women  are  good 
wives.  From  the  frequency  with  which  his  women  do 
not  wait  to  be  wooed,  falling  in  love  at  first  sight  and 
frankly  encouraging  the  men  they  have  singled  out,  we 
may  deduce  Shakspere's  opinion  that  women  are  readier 
to  take  the  first  step  in  love-making  than  is  ordinarily 
supposed.  Apparently  also  Shakspere  does  not  despise  a 
man  who  was  attracted  toward  a  woman  primarily  be- 
cause she  was  wealthy. 

If  a  truly  great  man  is  to  be  known  by  his  contempt  for 
money  and  for  death,  then  we  should  be  obliged  to  deny 
greatness  to  Shakspere.  His  plays  confirm  what  we  know 
also  from  legal  documents,  that  he  had  a  proper  regard 
for  money.     And  passage  after  passage  suggests  that  he 


CONCLUSION  381 

had  a  shrinking  horror  of  death,  or  rather  of  the  cor- 
ruption of  the  charnel-house.  We  can  each  of  us  decide 
for  ourselves  the  precise  weight  to  be  attached  to  the  sig- 
nificant fact  that  Shakspere  is  abundant  in  his  references 
to  sleep  and  endless  in  his  eulogy  of  it.  Equally  signifi- 
cant are  the  frequent  passages  in  praise  of  music,  from 
which  we  may  deduce  the  opinion  that  Shakspere  himself 
delighted  in  it. 

He  is  constant  in  belauding  the  horse,  but  he  has  never 
a  good  word  for  the  dog,  which  he  seems  to  have  detested 
and  despised.  He  has  a  distaste  for  both  schools  and 
schoolmasters.  He  also  dislikes  boy-actors,  the  rivals  of 
his  own  company.  He  cannot  contain  his  contempt  for 
foppish  courtiers,  snobs  and  flunkies,  never  neglecting  an 
occasion  to  jeer  at  them  and  to  hold  them  up  to  scorn. 
On  the  other  hand  he  has  a  high  respect  for  kings, 
merely  as  monarchs.  As  might  be  expected,  his  mind 
is  much  occupied  with  the  theater  and  especially  with 
actors;  and  he  is  prone  to  use  figures  of  speech  drawn 
from  the  vocabulary  of  the  stage,  even  when  these  are 
quite  inappropriate  to  the  person  who  utters  them. 
Characters  as  dissimilar  as  Richard  III,  Hamlet  and 
Othello  draw  unhesitatingly  upon  the  technical  terms  of 
the  contemporary  English  theater;  and  Cleopatra  shrinks 
from  the  prospect  of  being  inadequately  personated  by 
a  squeaking  boy. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  has  scarcely  a  figure  of  speech 
drawn  from  the  vocabulary  of  dramaturgy;  that  is  to  say, 
his  plays  prove  that  he  was  a  player  but  they  offer  no 
evidence  that  he  was  a  playwright — except  their  own 
existence.  From  the  infrequency  of  allusion  to  books 
and  authors,  we  may  infer  that  he  was  not  at  all  book- 


382         SHAKSPERE  AS  A  PLAYWRIGHT 

ish,  as  Ben  Jonson  was.  Evidently  he  was  not  a  great 
reader,  using  books  rather  as  tools  for  his  immediate 
purpose  than  as  friends  for  constant  intercourse.  He 
shows  none  of  the  predilections  of  a  scholar;  even  if  he  had 
small  Latin  and  less  Greek,  he  always  goes  to  the  nearest 
translation  of  the  classical  authors.  And  even  if  he  could 
read  French,  as  M.  Jusserand  maintains  and  as  seems 
more  probable  now  that  we  know  him  to  have  resided  in 
the  house  of  a  Huguenot,  he  approaches  Montaigne  in 
Florio's  captivating  translation. 

Apparently  Shakspere  is  wholly  free  from  vanity  founded 
on  anything  he  had  written  for  the  stage.  In  the  final 
twenty  years  of  his  life  he  makes  no  effort  to  come 
before  the  public  as  a  man  of  letters.  He  seems  to  be 
like  Scott  in  having  no  regard  for  literature  as  a  high 
vocation.  He  writes  plays  as  Scott  writes  novels,  be- 
cause that  is  the  work  nearest  to  his  hand.  Like  Scott 
again,  he  does  not  hold  himself  called  upon  always  to 
do  his  best  and  always  to  make  his  work  as  good  as  it 
could  be  made.  He  is  not  incessant  and  conscientious 
in  striving  to  attain  perfection;  and  he  attains  it  only 
now  and  again.  He  enjoys  what  he  does,  no  doubt,  but 
does  not  overvalue  it;  and,  as  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  sug- 
gested, he  holds  that  "the  defeat  of  the  Armada  was  a 
more  important  bit  of  work  than  to  amuse  the  audience 
at  the  Globe."  Yet  he  is  ever  interested  in  amusing  the 
audiences  of  the  Globe,  partly  because  it  is  always  inter- 
esting to  do  that  which  we  know  we  can  do  well,  and 
partly  because  of  the  solid  reward  to  be  reaped  by  suc- 
cess. To  him  as  to  Scott  the  life  of  a  man  of  letters  is 
less  alluring  than  the  life  of  a  country  gentleman.  And 
how  it  was  that  a  man  of  these  tastes  and  of  these  beliefs 


CONCLUSION  383 

should  have  written  'Hamlet'  and  'Othello,'  the  'Mer- 
chant of  Venice'  and  'As  you  Like  it,'  the  Falstaff  plays 
and  the  plays  from  Plutarch,  must  ever  remain  one  of 

the  insoluble  mysteries  of  genius. 


NOTES  ON  THE  MAPS 

Without  attempting  to  decide  questions  of  precise  location 
which  perhaps  are  insoluble,  I  have  endeavored  to  mark  approx- 
imately the  position  of  every  place  in  London  with  which 
Shakspere's  name  can  be  connected  either  historically  or  tra- 
ditionally. On  the  ordinance  map  these  could  be  found  wher- 
ever the  locality  has  been  recorded  with  any  degree  of  accur- 
acy, or  could  be  discovered  by  patient  collation  of  every 
accessible  map  either  before  or  since  that  of  1573.  In  many 
of  these  the  sites  of  vanished  buildings  can  be  traced  by 
such  names  as  Playhouse  Yard,  Cockpit  Alley,  etc.  To-day 
even  these  have  in  many  cases  disappeared  before  "the  march 
of  improvement."  Where  the  precise  situation  is  unknown  I 
have  outlined  in  red  the  general  district,  as  in  the  case  of  St. 
Helen's,  Bishopgate,  or  the  site  of  Salisbury  House  in  the  White- 
friars.  When  we  come  to  Hofnagel's  map  of  1573  the  matter 
ceases  to  be  so  easy.  There  is  no  scale  to  guide  us  and  the 
distances  between  and  relations  of  one  building  and  another 
are  so  general  and  inaccurate  that,  after  careful  research  and 
comparison  of  all  the  maps  from  that  day  to  this  on  which  I 
could  lay  hands,  I  am  not  at  all  certain  of  more  than  the  gen- 
eral position  of  many  of  them.  The  sites  concerning  which  I 
am  principally  in  doubt  are  those  of  the  Theater  and  the  Cur- 
tain in  Shoreditch,  together  with  that  of  St.  Leonard's  Church, 
which  it  is  odd  is  not  indicated  as  are  most  other  churches 
extant  at  that  period.  The  old  precinct  of  the  Blackfriars 
Monastery  was  from  the  date  of  its  suppression  by  Henry  VIII 
until  the  great  fire  of  1666  in  such  a  continual  state  of  change 
that  it  is  only  because  of  its  relation  to  the  Church  of  St. 
Andrew  that  I  am  able  to  indicate  the  position  of  Shakspere's 
house  there  at  all;  it  is  shown  more  precisely  in  the  ordinance 
map. 

While  our  debt  to  Professor  Wallace  for  his  publication  of  the 
information  extracted  largely  from  the  Loseley  MSS.  is  great, 
his  account  of  the  sites  of  this  dwelling  of  Shakspere's  and  of 

385 


386  NOTES  ON  THE  MAPS 

the  Blackfrlars  Theater  is  so  confused  and  out  of  harmony 
with  the  indications  of  the  great  sixty-inch  ordinance  map  of 
London  that  my  utmost  patience  has  failed  to  co-ordinate 
them.  Other  traditions  have,  however,  placed  the  theater 
where  I  have  shown  it — to  the  south  of  Playhouse  Yard.  Few 
of  the  sites  on  the  1573  map  may  be  absolutely  exact,  but  a 
comparison  of  the  two  maps  will  give  them  more  nearly  and 
serve  to  indicate  the  difficulties  of  which  I  have  spoken. 

E.  H.  B. 

1.  St.  Leonard's,  Shoreditch.   Tarleton  and  J.  Burbage  buried 

there. 

2.  The  Theater,    in    King   John's    Court,   Holywell   Lane, 

Shoreditch. 

3.  The  Curtain,  in  Curtain  Road  at  Hewitt  Street  (' Romeo 

and  Juliet'  produced   there   1596),   formerly  Curtain 
Court. 

4.  The   Fortune,  in  Golding  (now  Golden)   Lane,  between 

Rose  Alley  and  Black  Swan  Court,  in  the  block  be- 
tween Playhouse  Alley  and  Roscoe  Street. 

5.  The  Red  Bull,  in  St.  John's  Street,  Clerkenwell,  on  the 

site  of  Hayward's  Place,  in  Woodbridge  Street,  north 
of  Aylesbury  Street. 

6.  Shakspere's  lodging,  in  the  house  of  Montjoy,  at  the  north- 

east corner  of  Silver  and  Mongewell  Streets. 

7.  The  Bull  Inn,  in  Bishopgate  Street. 

8.  St.  Helen's,  in  Bishopgate  Street.     A  W.  Shakspere  is  said 

to  have  lived  in  the  precinct,  possibly  not  the  poet. 

9.  The    Cross    Keys    Inn,    in    Gracechurch    Street,    below 

Leadenhall. 

10.  The  Boars  Head  Tavern,  in  Eastcheap,  at  the  corner  of 

Gracechurch  Street,  where  now  stands  the  statue  of 
William  IV. 

11.  The  Mermaid  Tavern,  in  Cheapside,  between  Bread  and 

Friday  Streets,  with  access  to  all  three. 

12.  The  Bell  Savage  Inn,  outside  Ludgate,  between  the  old 

Bailey  and  Farringdon  Streets,  on  the  north  side  of 
Ludgate  Hill. 

13.  The  Bell  Tavern,  in  Carter  Lane,  on  the  south  side,  be- 

tween Addle  Hill  and  Godliman  Street. 

14.  The  Blackfriars  Playhouse,   in    Playhouse   Yard,   Black- 

friars,  where  the  " Times"  publishing  office  stands. 


NOTES  ON  THE  MAPS  387 

15.  Shakspere's  house,  in  St.  Andrew's  Hill,  Blackfriars,  nearly 

at  the  south  corner  of  Ireland  Yard. 

16.  St.  Mary  Overies,  now  St.  Saviour's,  Southwark.   Edmund 

Shakspere  buried  there. 

17.  The  Whitehart  Tavern,  in  High  Street  Borough,  on  the 

east  side,  a  little  to  the  south  of  Bedale  Street. 

18.  The  Bearbaiting,  on  Bankside. 

19.  The   Globe,   on    Bankside,    now   within    the    premises   of 

Barclay  and  Perkins'  brewery. 

20.  The  Bullbaiting,  on  Bankside,  in  Bear  Gardens. 

21.  The  Rose,  in  Rose  Alley,  north  of  Park  Street,  South- 

wark. 

22.  The  Falcon  Tavern,  Bankside,  in  Falcon  Wharf  Alley. 

23.  The  Hope,  in  the  curve  formed  by  Holland  Street,  op- 

posite the  Falcon. 

24.  The  Swan,  under  the  present  roadway  of  Blackfriars  Road, 

where  Holland  Street  debouches. 

25.  Gray's  Inn  Hall. 

26.  Middle  Temple  Hall. 

27.  The  Great  Hall,  Whitehall,  on  the  south  side  of  Horse- 

guards  Avenue,  at  the  angle  under  the  present  Board 
of  Trade  Buildings. 

28.  The  Cockpit  or  Phoenix,  in  Cockpit  Court,  between  Bow 

and  Russell  Streets,  Covent  Garden. 

29.  Paul's,  in  the  Choir  Singing  School,  near  the  Convocation 

House,  St.  Paul's.  The  Chapter  or  Convocation 
House  stood  about  where  the  cross  is  on  the  ordi- 
nance map. 

30.  The  Whitefriars,  in  old  granary  at  the  lower  end  of  the 

back  yard  of  Salisbury  House,  Whitefriars. 
The  Newington  Butts,  in  Ames  Place,  formerly  Playhouse 
Yard,  between  Clock  Passage,  Swan  Place  and  Hamp- 
ton Street,  Newington  Butts,  is  not  shown  on  the 
map  for  lack  of  space;  to  do  so  would  have  unduly 
reduced  the  scale  and  the  site  is  not  very  certain. 

Inn  signifies  an  hostelry  in  the  yard  of  which  it  is  recorded 
that  plays  were  acted. 

Tavern,  an  inn  of  which  no  such  record  exists,  but  which  is  in 
other  ways  connected  historically  or  traditionally  with 
Shakspere. 


MAP    OF    LONDON    AT   THE    END    OF    SIXTEENTH    CENTURY 


K: 


Is!*.f#'~y,^ 


;*A  ■*' 


MAP    OF    LONDON    AT   THE    BEGINNING    OF    TWENTIETH    CENT 


INDEX 


Absolute,  Sir  Anthony,  173. 

Achilles,  232,  261. 

Acting,  Shakspere's  dislike  of,  179. 

Action,  unity  of,  105,  214,  344-346. 

Actium,  264. 

'Actors   and  the  Art  of  Acting,'  by 

Lewes,  177. 
Adam,  145,  160,  168,   171,  173,  175, 

179,  180,  182,  253. 
Adams,  Edwin,  199. 
Adams,  Parson,  137. 
Addison's  'Campaign,'  42. 
'Address  to  the  Reader,'  Shirley's,  13. 
Admiral's  men,  24. 
Adriana,  72. 

iEgeon,  71,  72,  162,  174. 
'iEneid,'  Surrey's,  46. 
JSschyhis,  14,  219,  236,  288,  302,  319, 

332. 
Agamemnon,  59,  232,  261,  319. 
Agincourt,  118,  132,  133. 
Agnes,  134. 
Aguecheek,  Sir  Andrew,  145,  164,  201, 

225. 
Ajax,  232. 

'Alcalde  of  Zalamea,'  by  Calderon,  58. 
Alceste,  94,  364. 
'Alchemist,'  7. 
Alexander,  199. 
'All  for   Love,   or  The   World   Well 

Lost,'  267. 
'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,'  53,  103, 

174,   220,   221,   222-226,   227,   228, 

229,  253. 
Alonzo,  341. 
Amiel,  210. 
Amiens,  196. 

'Amphitruo'  of  Plautus,  70. 
Amyot,  257. 

Angelo,  226,  228,  229,  309,  375. 
Anne,  Queen,  90,  91,  353,  354. 
'Antigone,'  266. 
Antigonus,  336. 
Antipholi,  the  two,  71,  162. 
Antonio,  145,  146,  147,  148,  150,  153, 

162,  341. 


Antony,    Mark,    257,    259,   261,   262, 

263,  264,  265,  266,  267,  268,  269, 

305,  328. 
'Antony  and  Cleopatra,'  20,  52,  53, 

231,  254,  256,   264-269,   275,  301, 

314. 
Apothecary,  in  'Romeo  and  Juliet,' 

114. 
'Arabian  Nights,'  141. 
'Arcadia,'  Sidney's,  281. 
Arcite,  355. 
Ariel,  341. 
Ariosto,  138. 
Aristocrats,  272-275. 
Aristophanes,  83. 
Aristotle,  31,  96,  105,  106,  237,  341, 

344- 
Armada,  the,  133,  296,  304,  382. 
Armin,   Robert,    186,    187,    191,    193, 

195,  196,  228,  252,  338. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  291,  335. 
Arnolphe,  134. 
Arthur,  Prince,  99. 
'As  You  Like  It,'  4,  20,  53,  138,  142, 

144,   156-161,   162,   164,   168,   171, 

179,   183,   196,  199,  200,  201,  220, 

341,  383- 
Athenians,  theater  of  the,  311. 

Athens,  35,  43,  82,  145,  258. 

Attic  dramatists,  43. 

Auber,  79. 

Audrey,  157,  200. 

Augier,  84,  235,  312,  347,  349- 

Autolycus,  338. 

Bacon,  ii,  19,  296. 

Bagehot,  Walter,  128,  275,  296,  373, 

374- 
Bajazet,  Racine's.  251. 
Balthasar,  186,  196. 
Balzac,  II,  131,  132,  267,  268. 
Banquo,  301,  319,  320,  323. 
Baptista,  174. 
Barabbas,  Marlowe's,  151. 
'Barber  of  Seville,'  235. 
Bardolph,  126,  130,  132,  133,  201. 


389 


39Q 


INDEX 


Barrett,  Lawrence,  145,  199. 
Bassanio,  147,  148,  153. 
Bear  Garden  Theater,  28. 
Beatrice,  144,  148,  152,  153,  154,  155, 

156,  159,  162,  164,  191,  234. 
Beaumarchais,  235. 
Beaumont,  8,  13,  40,  44,  75,  76,  201, 

213,  227,  310,  329,  330,  331,  332, 

333,  335,  336,  337,  339,  347,  35i> 

355,  356. 
Beauval,  Mademoiselle,  195. 
Becky  Sharp,  268. 
Beeston,  Chr.,  186,  187. 
Beethoven,  288. 
Bejart,  Madeleine,  191,  195. 
Belarius,  334. 

Belch,  Sir  Toby,  145,  164,  195,  196. 
'Belle  Helene,'  232. 
Belmont,  146,  147. 
Benedick,  84,  144,  152,  153,  154,  155, 

156,  162. 
Benfield,  Robert,  187. 
Benvolio,  no,  in,  114. 
Bergamo,  301. 

Bertram,  223,  224,  231,  375. 
Besant,  Sir  Walter,  289. 
Bianca,  140. 
Biondello,  138. 
Biron,  84. 

Blackfriars'  Theater,  5,  184,  188. 
Blank  verse,  46,  100. 
'Blue  Bird,'  341. 
Boccaccio,  56,  134,  222,  335. 
Bohemia,  9,  35,  82,  301. 
Boileau,  8,  312. 

Bolingbroke,  92,  93,  94,  125,  199. 
Bolognese  painters,  47. 
Bolognese  tradition,  138. 
Booth,  Edwin,  194,  199,  322. 
Borachio,  154. 
Bos  worth  Field,  91. 
Bottom,  78,  80,  81,  82,  113,  128,  145, 

175,  196,  258,  338. 
Boucicault,  54,  57,  182. 
'Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,'  81,  134. 
Bows  in  'Pendennis,'  176. 
Boy  in  'Henry  V,'  126. 
Boys   in   Shakspere's   company,    200, 

250,  252,  325. 
Brabantio,  35,  239,  240,  242,  252,  253. 
Bradley,  Professor,  243,  249,  250,  255, 

256,  287,  288,  300,  330,  372. 
Brandes,  123,  151. 
Bridges,  Robert,  309. 
Brisebarre,  57. 
British  Isles,  126,  296. 
'Broken  Heart,'  30. 


Brooke,  Arthur,  106,  107,  242. 

Brunetiere,  11,  251. 

Brutus,  194,  257,  259,  260,  261,  262, 
263,  328. 

Bryan,  George,  187. 

Buckingham,  90,  92,  353. 

Burbage,  James,  25,  26,  27. 

Burbage,  Richard,  160,  170,  171,  181, 
182,  185,  186,  187,  191,  193,  194, 
196,  198,  214,  252,  259,  325. 

Burbage's  company,  3,  4,  188,  344. 

Burbage's  Theater,  25,  27,  188. 

Byron,  56,  59. 


Cade,  Jack,  43,  272,  273. 

Caesar,  Julius,  260,  262,  268,  273,  301, 

3°5- 

'Caesar  and  Cleopatra'  of  Bernard 
Shaw,  232. 

Caesarism,  260. 

Caius,  Dr.,  131,  132,  134. 

Calderon,  30,  58. 

Caliban,  196,  341,  342,  343. 

'Cambridge  History  of  English  Liter- 
ature,' 16. 

'Campaign,'  Addison's,  42. 

'Canterbury  Tales,'  Miss  Lee's,  56. 

Capulet,  Lady,  in. 

Capulets,  the,  109,  no,  in. 

Cardinal  in  'Duchess  of  Main,'  198. 

Cardinal  in  'King  John,'  98. 

Cassio,  199,  238,  243,  244,  246,  247, 
249,  251,  252,  253,  259,  284. 

Cassius,  259,  260,  261,  263. 

Caxton,  231. 

Celia,  161,  164,  200. 

Celimene,  364. 

Ceres,  343. 

Cervantes,  12,  137. 

Chamberlain's  company,  Lord,  24, 
188. 

'Changeling,'  Middleton's,  33. 

Chapman,  13,  231. 

Character  development,  155. 

Characters,     Shakspere's,     193,     374, 

375- 
'Charles's  Martyrdom,'  198. 
Chaucer,  231. 
Chettle,  172. 

Chief  Justice  in  'Henry  IV,'  125. 
Children's  companies,  21 1. 
Chronicle-play,  38,  39,  43,  44,  45,  46, 

83,  85-101,  117,  118,  123,  125,  136, 

254,  255,  256,  257,  264,  270,  318, 

332. 
Cicero,  235,  236. 


INDEX 


391 


Cintlo,  Giraldi,  241. 

Clarence,  Duke  of,  92. 

Claudio,  144,  152,  153,  154    186,  199, 

227,  228,  309,  375. 
Claudius,   King,   205,   209,   210,   212, 

259- 
Cleopatra,    200,   258,    267,   268,   269, 

381. 
Clown  in  'Othello,'  252;  in  'Winter  s 

Tale,'  338. 
Clowns,  Shakspere's,  77,  78,  138,  224. 
Coleridge,  73,  103,  210,  250,  265,  269, 

373,  374- 
College  de  Clermont,  9. 
Comedie-Francaise,  25,  189. 
Comedy,  134. 
Comedy,    Shakspere's,    83,    84,    128, 

129,  236. 
Comedy-dramas,  219-236. 
'Comedy  of  Errors,'  42,  54,  64,  69- 

73,  74,  77,  79,  81,  82,  93,  103,  108, 

140,  162,  174,  239,  290,  314,  345. 
Comedy-of-humors,  the,  44. 
Comedy-of-manners,  84. 
Comic  dramatists,  235,  236. 
Commune  in  Paris,  274. 
Condell,  Henry,   181,  186,  187,   198, 

199,  252,  347,  366,  368. 
Congreve,  67,  68,  235,  310. 
Constance,  Queen,  98. 
Cooke,  Alexander,  187. 
Cooper,  Fenimore,  131. 
Coquelin,  193,  203. 
Cordelia,  188,  280,  281,  282,  286,  325, 

374- 
'Conolanus,'  52,  53,   254,   256,    258, 

269-272. 
Coriolanus  (the  character),  257,  269, 

270,  271,  273. 
Corneille,  83,  219,  236,  251,  332,  352. 
Cornwall,  Duke  of,  283. 
'Corsican  Brothers,'  73. 
Costard,  77,  124,  139,  195,  196. 
Costumes  of  the  Elizabethan  stage,  37. 
Countess  in  'All's  Well,'  224,  375. 
Cowley,  Richard,  186,  187. 
Cranmer,  353. 
Creon,  266. 
Cressida,  230. 
'Critic,'  Sheridan's,  307. 
Criticism,  dramatic,  31 1,  312,  314. 
Croix  d'Or,  8. 
Cromwell,  150. 
Crosse,  Samuell,  187. 
Crummies    in    'Nicholas    Nickleby,' 

192. 
Cushman,  Charlotte,  322. 


'Cymbeline,'    52,    53,    331,    333-336, 

337,  338,  340,  342,  344,  356,  357, 

360. 
Cyprus,  238,  239. 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  193. 

'Dame  Blanche,'  78. 

Dante,  217. 

Dauphin,  the,  98,  123. 

'David  Copperfield,'  379. 

Davies,  John,  173. 

'Defence  of  Poesie,'  Sidney's,  13. 

Dekker,  13,  126. 

Delphi,  301. 

Democrats,  272-275. 

Denmark,  9. 

Derby's  men,  Lord,  188. 

Desdemona,  223,  238,  239,  240,  242, 
246,  247,  249,  250,  251,  252,  374, 
378. 

Development,  Shakspere's,  as  play- 
wright, 62,  63,  291;  as  poet,  63,  64, 
291-293. 

Diana,  227. 

Dickens,  126,  304,  379. 

Diomed,  230. 

Dionysus,  theater  of,  28,  299. 

'Divine  Comedy,'  288. 

Dogberry,  145,  154,  164,  165,  186, 
191,  195,  228,  258,  338. 

Doll  Tearsheet,  126. 

'Don  Garcie  de  Navarre,'  Moliere's, 
58. 

Don  John,  154,  199,  247. 

'Don  Juan,'  58,  59. 

'Don  Quixote,'  137,  141. 

'Dora,'  Tennyson's,  56. 

'Dora  Creswell,'  by  Miss  Mitford,  56. 

Dover  Cliff,  36,  278. 

Dowton,  191. 

Drake,  296. 

Dramatic  criticism,  311,  312,  314. 

Dramatic-romance,  the,  40,  44,  329- 

346,  355-. 
Dramatic  situations,  60. 
Dromios,   the   two,    70,   72,  77,    124, 

195,  196. 
Drummond,  7. 
Drury  Lane,  197,  198. 
Dryden,  266,  267. 
'Duchess  of  Malfi,'  Webster's,  199. 
Duke,  in  'As  You  Like  It,'  161,  199; 

in  'Measure  for  Measure,'  174,  228, 

229;  in  'Merchant  of  Venice,'  174; 

in  'Othello,'  174,  240,  252. 
Duke,  John,  186,  187. 
Dull,  77,  124,  139,  195,  196. 


392 


INDEX 


Dumas,  the  elder,  227. 
Dumas,  the  younger,  84,  192,  312. 
Duncan,  316,  319,  320. 
Dunsinane,  36,  320. 

ECCLESTONE,  WlLLIAM,    187. 

Eckermann,  86,  317. 

Edgar,  252,  281,  282. 

Edmund,  199,  281,  282,  283,  284,  309. 

Edward  I,  150. 

'Edward  II,'  Marlowe's,  87,  254. 

Elbow,  228. 

Elinor,  Queen,  98. 

Eliot,  George,  130,  277. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  3,  21,  26,  98,  131, 
132,  145,  169,  170,  261,  274,  296, 
297,  298,  310,  351,  353,  354. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,   in   'Richard   III,' 

91. 

Elizabethan  drama,  27,  30,  140,  159, 
161,  225,  245,  288,  3io,  3l8- 

Elizabethan  playgoer,  19,  31,  46,  87, 
91,  137,  149,  152,  155,  207,  212, 
213,  232,  239,  274,  283,  285,  286, 
294-312,  313,  375. 

Elizabethan  playhouses,  19-21,  24-31. 

Elizabethan  playwrights,   13,   19,  31, 

32,  34,  56,  104,  300,  307,  311,  329, 

369. 
Elizabethan   sonneteers,   6,   63,    115, 

291. 
Elizabethan  stage,  32,  33,  245,  264, 

369. 

Elizabethan    theater,  184,    278,  294, 

371,  372,  38i. 
Elsinore,  24,  36,  301. 
Emerson,  129,  370,  373,  378. 
Emilia,  243,  246,  251,  252,  355. 
England,  24,  25,  26,  29,  38,  43,  45, 

98,    124,   133,   145,    150,    169,   210, 

235,  296,  302,  304,  311. 
English  comedy,  225. 
English  customs,  133,  145. 
English  drama,  18,  21-23,  26,  27,  32, 

33,  117,  197,  235,  302,  311. 
English  histories,  43,  52,  55,  123,  270, 

351,  379. 
English  humor,  296. 

English  inn,  24,  26. 
English  manners,  133,  145. 
English  novelists,  52,  53,  304. 
English  novels,  52,  53,  55,  56. 
English  tragedy,  44-48. 
Englishman,  the  Tudor,  296-299. 
Enobarbus,  269. 
Ephesus,  35,  71. 
Erckmann-Chatrian,  347,  348,  349. 


Eros,  269,  275. 
Escalus,  228. 

Ethics,  Shakspere's,  375-378. 
Ejon,  192. 
'Etourdi,'  134. 
Euripides,  14,  45,  236. 
Evans,  134. 

'Every  Man   in  His  Humour,'   171, 
186,  344. 

Fairy-play,  79,  340,  341,  343. 
'Faithful  Shepherdess,'  30. 
Falstaff,  36,  78,  86,  100,  113,  117,  119, 
120,   121,   122,   126,   128-130,   131, 

132,  133,  134,  135,  136,  137,  HO, 

142,  164,   194,  195,  196,  201,  225, 

234,  266,  304,  383. 
'Famous     Victories    of    Henry    the 

Fifth,'  118,  119,  138,  254. 
Farce,  71,  73,  134,  135,  138. 
Faulconbridge,  97,  100,  156,  199,  309. 
Faust,  59,  341. 
'Femmes  Savantes,'  69,  235. 
Fenton,  132,  134. 
Ferdinand,  341,  342,  343. 
Feste,  164,  196. 
Field,  Nathan,  187. 
Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,  353. 
Fielding,  304. 
First  Folio,  see  Folio. 
Fletcher,  13,  40,  44,  75,  76,  201,  213, 

227,  308,  310,  329,  330,  331,  332, 

333,  335,  336,  337,  339,  347,  349, 
350,  351,  352,  353,  355,  356,  361, 

362,  365- 
Florence,  302. 
Florio's  Montaigne,  382. 
Florizel,  339,  341. 
Fluellen,  126. 
Folio   edition   of   Shakspere's    plays, 

first,  7,  41,  44,  49,  181,  185,  187, 

224,  320,  338,  347,  366,  368,  369; 

third,  357. 
Fool  in  'King  Lear,'  164,  188,  196. 
Ford,  36,  134,  136. 
Ford,  Mrs.,  133,  134,  136,  164,    200, 

252. 
Forest  of  Arden,  82,   144,   145,   156, 

157,  158. 
Fortinbras,  206,  214. 
Fortune  Theater,  27,  28. 
'Fra  Diavolo,'  79. 

France,  29,  45,  58,  84,  169,  236,  302. 
Francesca  da  Rimini,  59. 
French,  the,  98,  123. 
French  comedy,  236. 
French  critic,  112,  346. 


INDEX 


393 


French  lyrists,  6. 

French  naturalists,  126. 

French  theater,  29,  190. 

French  tragedy,  45,  251,  320. 

'Friar  Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay,'  30, 

157,  34i-  . 
Friar  Francis,  154. 

Friar  Lawrence,  no,  113, 115, 116, 174. 
Friars  in  'Measure  for  Measure,'  174. 
Friendship,  7. 
Frobisher,  296. 
'Froufrou,'  349. 
Fuller,  Margaret,  219. 
Fuller,  Thomas,  8. 
Furnivall,  123,  192. 

Gadshill,  121,  135. 
Gascoigne,  138. 
Gautier,  Theophile,  373. 
'Gendre  de  M.  Poirier,'  235,  349. 
'George-a-Greene,'  by  Robert  Greene, 

33,  34- 

Ghost  in  'Hamlet,'  171,  173,  175,  180, 
182,  205,  209,  253,  301. 

'Ghosts,'  Ibsen's,  18,  318. 

Gilbert,  John,  173. 

Gilburne,  Samuel,  187. 

Gillette,  182. 

Glendower,  Owen,  125. 

Globe  Theater,  4,  5,  25,  169,  184,  188, 
197,  198,  208,  214,  224,  258,  274, 
277,  289,  294,  298,  301,  321,  382. 

Gloster,  Earl  of,  43,  99,  281,  282,  283, 

3°9- 
Gloucester,  see  Gloster. 

Gobbo,  77,  195. 

Goethe,  59,  60,  86,  217,  277,  317,  373, 

375- 
'Golden  Legend,'  59. 
Goneril,  283. 
'Gorboduc,'  45,  46,  47. 
Gordon,  Lord  George,  273. 
Goughe,  Robert,  187. 
Gower,  358. 
Gozzi,  60. 

Gratiano,  148,  149,  199,  200,  228,  252. 
Grave-digger  in  'Hamlet,'  195,  258. 
Gray,  61,  237. 
Great  Britain,  31,  305. 
Greece,  232,  236. 
Greek  characters,  261. 
Greek  comedy,  127,  225,  236. 
Greek  drama,  34,  206,  238. 
Greek  dramatic  poets,  59. 
Greek  historian,  52. 
Greek  theater,  27. 
Greek  tragedians,  344. 


Greek  tragedy,  18,  105,  106. 

Greeks,  299. 

Greene,  Robert,  33,  34,  57,  83,  157, 

172,  329,  332,  341. 
Grumio,  138. 
Guildenstern,  212,  375. 
'Gulliver's  Travels,'  363. 
Gummere,  Professor,  137. 

Hal,  Prince,  118,  120,  121,  122,  123. 

Halevy,  232,  349. 

Hall's  satires,  13. 

'Hamlet,'  4,  9,  36,  48,  54,  109,  140, 
142,  143,  147,  167,  180,  183,  195, 
199,  201,  202-217,  221,  225,  237, 
238,  239,  240,  241,  254,  255,  256, 
260,  264,  265,  282,  288,  290,  301, 
304  312,  314,  318,  334,  368,  383. 
Hamlet,  the  earlier,  204,  205,  207, 
208,  213,  220,  280. 

Hamlet  (the  character),  36,  77,  93, 
171,  175,  176,  182,  185,  191,  194, 
198,  203-216,  243,  252,  282,  327, 
328,  342,  375,  378,  379,  381. 

'Hard  Cash,'  by  Charles  Reade,  57. 

Hathaway,  Anne,  3. 

Hazlitt,  69. 

Helena,  79,  193,  223,  225,  231. 

Hellenic  legend,  the,  59. 

Heming,  John,  181,  186,  187,  193, 
195,  196,  347,  366,  368. 

'Henry  IV,'  52,  54,  86,  100,  117,  118; 
Part  I,  119-121;  Part  II,  121,  122; 
123,  130,  131,  185,  200,  266,  304. 

Henry  IV  (the  character),  122, 132, 133. 

'Henry  V,'  52,  54,  60,  100,  118,  119, 
120,   121-127,    131,   132,   200,   254, 

275,  352. 
Henry  V  (the  character),  97,  118,  119, 

120,  121-125,  132,  133,  138. 
'Henry  VI,'  41-44,  49,   52,   54,  64, 

89,  131,  272,  300,  358. 
'Henry  VIII,'  5,   52,   123,  347,  349, 

35°-354>  361,  365. 
Henry  VIII,  133,  297,  298,  351. 
Henslowe,  Philip,  49. 
Hermia,  193. 

Hermione,  325,  337,  338,  353. 
Hero,  144,  152,  153,  154,  164,  200. 
Herod,  149. 
Hey  wood,  13. 
Hieronimo,  198. 
Hippolyta,  354. 
'History  of  Error,'  70. 
Hogarth,  126. 
Holinshed,  52,  55,  86,  118,  119,  138, 

254,  256,  257,  314,  315,  316. 


394 


INDEX 


Holywell,  monastery,  2$. 

Homer,  218,  231,  232. 

Horace,  134. 

Horatio,  205. 

Host  of  the  Garter,  131,  134,  371. 

H6tel  de  Bourgogne,  25. 

Hotspur,  120,  121,  122,  123,  125,  199. 

Howard,  Bronson,  175. 

Hubert,  99. 

Hugo,  Victor,  207. 

Hunsdon's  men,  Lord,  188, 

Huxley,  219,  220. 

Hymen,  354. 

Iachimo,  335. 

Iago,  93,  199,  238,  239,  242,  243,  244, 

245,  246,  247,  248,  249,  250,  251, 

252,  253,  259,  284. 
Ibsen,  18,  84,  114,  239,  318,  378. 
Illyria,  35,  144,  164. 
Imogen,  333,  335,  336,  357. 
'Impromptu  of  Versailles,'  176. 
Inaccuracies  in  Shakspere's  plays,  9- 

11,  301,  302. 
Income,  sources  of  Shakspere's,  183, 

184. 
Inn,  the  English,  24,  26. 
Io,  302. 
Iocasta,  285. 

'Iphigenie,'  Racine's,  332. 
Iris,  343. 

Irving,  Sir  Henry,  151,  194,  199. 
Isabella,  226,  227,  229. 
Italian  comedians,  132. 
Italian  comedy-of-masks,  127,  138. 
Italian  critics,  45,  106,  311,  344-346. 
Italian  doctrine  of  unities,  106,  344- 

346. 
Italian  lyrists,  6. 
Italian  opera,  122. 
Italian  story-tellers,  53,  134. 
Italian   tales,   52,    55,    56,    106,    134, 

138,  237,  240,  241,  242,  243. 
Italian  theorists,  344-346. 
Italian  tragedies,  45. 
Italians  of  the  Renascence,  311,  344. 
Italy,  9,  45,  335. 
Ivanhoe,  355. 

Jacobean  playgoers,  331,  335,  337, 

34i,  354. 
Jacobean  theater,  351. 
James,  Henry,  224,  376. 
James  I,  4,  21,  169,  181,  310,  351. 
Jamy,  126. 

Jaques,  40,  157,  159,  160,  164,  328. 
Jebb,  Professor,  17. 


Jessica,  147,  148,  149,  200,  227,  375. 

'Jew  of  Malta,'  150. 

Jews,  Elizabethan  attitude  toward, 
150. 

Joan  of  Arc,  42. 

Johnson,  Doctor,  16,  264,  374,  377. 

Jones,  Henry  Arthur,  175. 

Jonson,  Ben,  6,  7,  8,  9,  11,  13,  14,  15, 
44,  57,  126,  171,  180,  186,  235,  255, 
308,  311,  329,  344,  345,  346,  367, 

369,  382. 
Julia,  74,  75,  76,  79,  80,  84,  162. 
Juliet,    109-113,    115,    154,   214,   223, 

336,  342. 

'Julius  Caesar,'  52,  53,  183,  220,  221, 
231,  254,  257,  258-263,  264,  265, 
266,  267,  271,  272,  301. 

Juno,  343. 

Jusserand,  M.,  85,  96,  102,  146,  296, 
364,  366,  377,  378,  382. 

Kate,  see  Katherine. 

Katharine,  Queen,  353,  354. 

Katherine,  98,  139,  140,  141,  156,  200. 

Keats,  56. 

Kemble,  Charles,  198,  199. 

Kemble,  Fanny,  326. 

Kemble,  John,  198,  276. 

Kemp,  William,   170,   171,   185,   186, 

187,  191,  193,  195,  196. 
Kenilworth,  3. 
Kent,  Earl  of,  284. 
King  in  'Hamlet,'  199,  206,  210,  214. 
'King  John,'  52,  54,  85,  86,  96-99, 

103,  119,  255,  371. 
'King  Lear,'  36,  48,  52,  54,  60,  61, 

99,   164,   182,    185,    191,   194,   196, 

199,  276-293,  294,  313,  374. 
'King  Leir,'  the  earlier,  280-283. 
King  of  France  in  'All's  Well,'  174. 
King's  Players,  4,  188. 
Knowell,  171,  180. 
Kyd,  14,  31,  41,  44,  46,  47,  48,  57, 

207,  213,  329,  332. 

Labiche's  farces,  192. 

Laertes,  199,  212,  213,  214,  259,  325, 

375- 
La  Feu,  224,  225. 
La  Grange,  191. 
'L'Aiglon,'  94. 

Lamb,  Charles,  16,  17,  191,  276. 
Lancaster,  44. 
Lang,    Andrew,    139-158,    223,    224, 

230. 
Latin  characters,  261. 
Latin  comedy,  18,  225,  345. 


INDEX 


395 


Launce,  77,   78,   124,   125,   139,   195, 

196. 
Leah,  149. 
Lear,  King  (the  character),  182,  185, 

191,   194,  279,  280,   281,  282,  286, 

374- 
'Leatherstocking  Tales,'  131. 
Le  Beau,  200,  201,  274. 
Lecky,  12. 

Lee,  Miss,  her  'Canterbury  Tales,'  56. 
Lee,  Sir  Sidney,  169,   170,  171,   183, 

184. 
Leicester,  Earl  of,  49. 
Leonato,  174,  186,  252. 
Leontes,  337,  338,  355. 
Lewes,  George  Henry,  177,  178,  180, 

370. 
Lodge,  159,  160. 
London,  1,  3,  4,  5,  6,  10,  24,  25,  26, 

27,  30,  32,  37,  39,  43.  62>  l68>  l69, 
171,  172,  183,  184,  188,  189,  190, 
198,  227,  273,  283,  297,  344,  345. 

London  playhouses,  25-31. 

Longfellow,  56,  59. 

Louis  XIV,  131,  351. 

Lounsbury,  Professor,  208,  217,  284, 

305,  307- 
'Love's   Labour's  Lost,'   52,   53,   64, 

65-69,  73,  76,  77,  78,  80,  82,  84, 

155,  195,  202. 
Lowell,  60,  61,  128. 
Lowin,  John,  187,  194. 
Lucian,  362. 
Lucio,  228,  252. 
'Lucrece,'  3,  7,  64,  305,  368. 
Lyly,  10,  I4;  82,  83,  192,  329,  332. 
Lysander,  79,  80. 

'Macbeth,'  4,  9,  36,  48,  52,  53,  109, 

119,   142,  195,  217,  221,  236,  239, 

254,  255,  256,  264,  265,  288,  301, 
313-328,  329,  334. 

Macbeth    (the    character),  93,    155, 

194,  274,  315,  316,  318,  319,  320, 

321,  322,  323,  324,  325,  326,  327, 

374- 
Macbeth,  Lady,  200,  316,  318,  319, 

320,  321,  323,  324,  325. 
Macduff,   318,    319,    320,    323,    325, 

328. 
Macduff,  Lady,  318,  325. 
Macmorris,  126. 
Macreadv,  93,  145,  193,  363. 
'Mile,  de  Belle-Isle,'  227. 
Madness,  149,  166,  210,  21 1,  279. 
Madrid,  30. 
Maeterlinck,  317,  327. 


Mak,  117. 

'Malade  Imaginaire,'  81,  134. 

Malone,  172. 

Malvolio,  162,  164,  165,  166,  371. 

Mantua,  116,  302. 

Marcellus,  205. 

Margaret,  Queen,  89,  200. 

Maria,  145,  162,  164,  165,  200,  252. 

Mariana,  227,  229. 

Marina,  357,  359,  360. 

Mark  Twain,  379. 

Marlowe,   14,  31,  41,  43,  44,  46,  48, 

59,  83,  86,  87,  150,  151,  254,  288, 

329,  332,  341. 
Marmontel's  'Moral  Tales,'  56. 
Marneffe,  Madame,  268. 
Marston,  222. 
'Masks  and  Faces,'  349. 
'Measure  for  Measure,'  53,  54,   103, 

174,  201,  220,  221,  226-230. 
Medici  chapel,  288. 
Medieval  drama,  30,  32,  117,  149. 
Medieval  stage,  29,  30,  371,  372. 
Meilhac,  232,  349. 
Meiningen  company,  190. 
'Mensechmi'  of  Plautus,  70,  72. 
Menander,  235,  236. 
Mephistopheles,  247. 
'Merchant  of  Venice,'  53,  54,  73,  77, 

142,   144,   145-151,   152,   153,   159, 

162,  174,  200,  220,  222,  227,  279, 

383. 
Mercutio,  97,  in,  112,  113,  156,  199, 

200,  228,  252. 
Meres,  Francis,  3,  49. 
Mermaid,  the,  8. 
'Merry  Wives   of  Windsor,'   36,   53, 

81,131-137,200,201,266,371. 
Messina,  144,  165. 
Michael  Angelo,  239,  288. 
Middle  Ages,  21,  29,  30,  32,  46,  296. 
Middleton,  33,  222. 
'Midsummer  Night's  Dream,'  35,  64, 

65,  78-82,  102,  108,  301,  341. 
Milan,  74,  302. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  87. 
Milton,  59,  217,  372. 
Miracle-plays,  22,  23,  38,  46. 
Miranda,  325,  341,  342,  343,  344. 
'Misanthrope,'  94,  204,  295. 
Mitford,  Mary  Russell,  56. 
Mob-scenes,  273. 
Modern  dramatic  poets,  59,  60. 
Modern  melodramas,  118. 
Moliere,  2,  5,  7,  8,  9,  12,  17,  21,  25, 

58,  59,  69,  80,  83,  84,  86,  94,  105, 

131,  132,  134,  143,  166,   168,   169, 


396 


INDEX 


171,  176,  182,  184,  189,  190,  191, 
195,  202,  203,  204,  209,  235,  236, 
247,  248,  295,  299,  310,  312,  318, 

35i,  352,  364,  367,  373,  377,  379- 
'Money,'  193. 

Montagues,  the,  109,  no,  in. 
Montaigne,  310,  374,  382. 
'Moral  Tales'  of  Marmontel,  56. 
Morality-plays,  22,  23. 
Morris,  59. 
'Morte  d' Arthur,'  59. 
'Much  Ado  about  Nothing,'  4,  53,  73, 

142,   152-156,   162,   174,   185,   186, 

196,  199,  202. 
Musset,  56,  166,  367. 
Mystery-play,    22,    32,    38,    77,    123, 

358,  371. 

Navarre,  302. 

Nerissa,  148,  149,  164,  200,  227. 

Nero,  45,  46,  47. 

New  Place,  at  Stratford,  4,  183. 

New  York,  189,  198. 

Nicholas  Nickleby,  192. 

Nick,  186. 

'Niebelungen  Lied,'  the,  59. 

North's  Plutarch,  10,  231,  257,  258. 

Nurse  to  Juliet,   in,   113,   115,  125, 

126,  128,  145,  200,  228. 
Nus,  Eugene,  57. 
Nym,  126,  133,  201. 

Oberon,  81,  371. 

'CEdipus  the   King,'  17,  18,  206,  216, 

241,  266,  285,  318. 
Old  men,  Shakspere  impersonator  of, 

I73-I7S,  182. 
Oliver,  157,  161,  164. 
Olivia,   162,   163,   164,   165,  200,  223, 

37i- 
Ophelia,    211,    212,    250,    355,    374, 

378. 
Orgon,  248. 
Orlando,  157,  158,  159,  160,  161,  163, 

168,  171,  200. 
Orsino,  162,  163,  164,  199. 
Osric,  201,  258,  274. 
Ostler,  William,  187. 
'Othello,'  4,  35,  53,  56,  69,  109,  142, 

174,  217,  221,  236,   237-253,   254, 

255,  256,  259,  288,  290,  312,  314, 

317,  318,  334,  383. 
Othello  (the  character),  93,  155,  185, 

191,   194,   198,  238,  239,  240,  242, 

243,   244,   246,   248-253,   284,   374, 

378,  381. 
Overdone,  Mrs.,  201,  228. 


Page,  Anne,  132,  134,  200. 

Page,  Mrs.,  133,  134,  136,  200. 

Palais  Royal,  192,  299. 

Palamon,  355. 

Pandarus,  225. 

Pantomime,  205. 

Paris,    25,    37,    169,    189,    212,    274, 

299. 
Paris,  County,  in,  113. 
Parolles,  223,  225. 
Pastoral  romance,  156,  157. 
Paulina,  338. 
'Pauvres  de  Paris,'  by  Brisebarre  and 

Nus,  57. 
Paynter,  362. 
Pedant,  the,  138,  141. 
Peele,  83,  329. 
Pembroke,  Earl  of,  50. 
'Pendennis,'  176,  379. 
Percy,  Lady,  125. 
Perdita,  325,  339,  340,  341. 
'Pericles,'  53,  347,  349,  357-360,  361, 

362,  365. 
Pericles,  106. 
Peter,  125,  185,  191,  195. 
Petruchio,  139,  140,  141,  156. 
'Philaster,'  76,  331,  333. 
Philip,  King,  371. 
Phillips,  Augustine,  186,  187. 
Philosophy   of   Shakspere,    215,   220, 

233,  333- 
Phcebe,  158,  162,  223. 
'Physician  of  His  Own  Honor,'  by 

Calderon,  58. 
Pinero,  175,  232. 

Pistol,   126,   127,   131,   132,   133,  201. 
Place,  unity  of,  105,  214,  344,  345. 
Plagiarism,  51-61. 
Platform-stage,  Elizabethan,  245. 
Plautus,  70,  71,  72. 
Play-within-the-play,    the,    140,    141, 

204,  205,  208,  209. 
Players,  Earl  of  Leicester's,  49;  Earl 

of  Pembroke's,  50;  King's,  4,  188. 
Players  in  'Hamlet,'  24,  77,  175,  176. 
Plutarch,    10,  52,   55,   231,  254,  256, 

257,  258,  263,  270,  271,  362,  383. 
Poe,  367. 
Poins,  126. 

Politics,  Shakspere's,  379,  380. 
Polixenes,  337,  338. 
Polonius,  36,  209,  212,  225,  375. 
Pompey,  268. 
Pope,  Alexander,  250,  372. 
Pope,  Thomas,  186,  187. 
Porter  in  'Macbeth,'  195,  234,  258. 


INDEX 


397 


Portia,  140,  144,  145,  H^,  147,  148, 

153,  164,  191,  200,  227. 
Posthumus,  335,  337. 
'Precieuses  Ridicules,'  69. 
Prince  of  Verona,  no. 
'Prometheus  Bound,'  288,  302. 
Prospero,  204,  341,  342,  343,  344,  379. 
Proteus,  74,  75,  76,  79,  80,  309,  375. 
'Psyche,'  352. 
Psychologist,  Shakspere's  power  as  a, 

215,  220,  233,  333. 
Puck,  341,  371. 
Puff,  Mr.,  in  the  'Critic,'  307. 
Puns,  303,  304,  305. 
Puritans,   the,    13,  25,   27,   308,    310, 

3ii,  379- 

'Pyramus  and  Thisbe,'  80. 


Queen  in  'Cymbeline,'  334. 
Quickly,  Mrs.,  126,  130,  131,  132,  133, 

136,  200,  228,  266. 
Quinault,  352. 


'Rabagas,  of  Sardou,  43. 

Rabelais,  310. 

Rachel,  176. 

Racine,  175,  219,  236,  251,  332. 

Raleigh,  296. 

'Ralph  Roister  Doister,'  192. 

Reade,  Charles,  57,  349. 

Rebecca,  355. 

Regan,  283,  325. 

Religion,  Shakspere's,  379,  380. 

Renascence,  the,  23,  29,  46,  296,  3 II, 

335,  344- 
Restoration,  the,  20,  21,  310,  329. 
Revenge-play,  203,  204,  209,  237,  283. 
Reynaldo,  212. 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  360. 
Ribera,  47. 
Rice,  John,  187. 
'Richard  II,'  52,  54,  85,  86,  92-95,  97, 

119,  254. 
Richard    II    (the    character),    92-95, 

97,  194. 
'Richard  III,'  36,  52,  54,  85,  86,  88- 
92,  93,  97,  102,  119,  270,  301,  322, 

323. 

Richard  III  (the  character),  36,  88- 
92,  93,  95,  97,  100,  182,  185,  194, 
247,  274,  316,  322,  323,  371,  381. 

'Richelieu,'  193. 

Richmond,  91,  199,  325,  371. 

Robin  Hood,  157. 

Robinson,  Richard,  187. 


Roderigo,  242,  245,  246,  249. 
'Rodogune,'  Corneille's,  251. 
Romans,  drama  of  the,  34. 
Romans,  theater  of  the,  27,  311. 
Romantic-comedies,  62,  84,  137,  142- 

^7,  333,  336. 
Rome,  10,  259,  270,  271,  302. 
Romeo,  109,  in,  112,  114,  115,  116, 

194,  203,  204,  214,  243,  252,  342, 

379- 

'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  53,  69,  101,  102- 
116,  117,  125,  126,  137,  142,  158, 
174,  185,  195,  200,  202,  217,  220, 
237,  239,  241,  242,  254,  259,  260, 
267,  290,  304,  317,  318,  334. 

Rosalind,  74,  140,  148,  156,  157,  158, 
159,  160,  161,  163,  164,  191,  200, 
223 ,  234,  340,  342. 

Rosaline,  112. 

Rose  Theater,  188. 

Rosencrantz,  212,  375. 

Rostand,  94. 

Rowe,  20. 

Roxane,  Racine's,  251. 

Rumor,  122. 

Sagas,  the,  59. 

Salanio,  149. 

Samson,  176. 

Sand,  George,  224. 

Sandeau,  235,  347,  349. 

Sarcey,  108,  312. 

Sardou,  43,  175,  371. 

Scapin,  295. 

Scenery,  29,  30,  33"37,  278. 

Schiller,  60. 

'School  for  Scandal,'  235. 

Schopenhauer,  294. 

Scotland,  9,  302. 

Scott,  267,  382. 

Scribe,  70,  79,  84,  145,  228,  239,  259, 

371. 

Scribie,  La,  145. 
Sebastian,  162,  163,  164. 
'Sejanus,'  Jonson's,  180,  186. 
Senecan  tragedy,  44,  45,  46,  47,  238, 

3H,  3X5- 
'Seven  Deadly  Sins,'  187. 
Sex-problem  plays,  222. 
Sganarelle,  132. 
'Shakspere   as  an  Actor  and  Critic,' 

by  Lewes,  178. 

Shakspere,  Edmund,  4. 
Shakspere,  Hamnet,  3,  4. 
Shakspere,  John,  2,  3. 
Shakspere,  Judith,  3,  5. 


398 


INDEX 


Shakspere,  Mary  Arden,  2. 
Shakspere,  Susanna,  3,  4. 
Shallow,  126,  130. 
Shancke,  John,  187. 
Shaw,  Bernard,  232. 
Shelley,  59,  276,  279,   288,  356,  367. 
Sheridan,  67,  175,  197,  198,  235,  307. 
Sherwood  of  the  old  ballads,  158. 
Shirley's  'Address  to  the  Reader,'  13. 
Shylock,  137,  144,  145,  146,  147,  148, 
149,   150,   151,   153,   194,   196,  227, 

375,  377- 
Sicily,  258. 

Siddons,  Mrs.,  276,  325. 
Sidney,  13,  34,  46,  281,  311,  345. 
Silence,  126. 
Silvia,  74,  75,  76. 
Silvius,  158. 
Sinkler,  John,  187. 
'Sir  Thomas  More,'  366. 
Slender,  134,  164,  201. 
Sly,  Christopher,  35,  141,  201. 
Slye,  William,  186,  187. 
Smollett,  304. 

'Sonnets,'  4,  5,  6,  178,  179. 
Sophocles,    14,    17,  45,   83,    105,   206, 

216,  219,  236,  237,  285,  286,  288, 

299,  3*8,  332,  367,  37i,  376,  377. 
Sources  of  Shakspere's  plays,  52-60. 
Southampton,  Earl  of,  3,  6,  7. 
Spain,  58,  304. 
Spanish  stage,  the,  30. 
'Spanish  Tragedy,'  by  Kyd,  30,  47, 

48,  57,  198,  204. 
Spedding,  James,  192,  200,  350. 
Speed,  77,  7SK  124,  125,  139,  195,  196. 
Stations,  medieval  device  of,  22,  33, 36. 
Steevens,  I. 
Stendhal,  166. 
Stephano,  342,  343. 
Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  295,  382. 
Stevenson,  32,  365. 
Stock  companies,  197. 
Stockmann,  379. 
Strange's  men,  Lord,  188. 
Stratford,  Grammar  School  at,  3,  8,  9. 
Stratford-on-Avon,   I,  2,  3,  4,  5,  58, 

168,   171,   172,   183,   184,   188,  313. 
'Streets    of   New   York,'    by    Bouci- 

cault,  57. 
Strolling  actors,  23,  24,  25,  26. 
Superstitions,  supernatural,  300,  301. 
'Surena,'  Corneille's,  332. 
Surface,  Charles,  198. 
Surrey's  '^Eneid,'  46. 
Swift,  233. 
Swinburne,  336. 


Sympathy  with  his  characters,  Shak- 
spere's, 251. 

Taine,  70,  268,  297,  299. 
'Tamburlaine,'  Marlowe's,  48. 
'Taming  of  a  Shrew,'  138,  141. 
'Taming   of    the  Shrew,'   35,   54,  60, 

61,  98,    138-141,    174,    186,   201. 
'Tartuffe,'  94,  202,  209,  247,  248,  318. 
Taylor,  Joseph,  187,  194,  349. 
Teazle,  Sir  Peter,  173. 
'Tempest,'   9,    52,   53,   79,   233,   301, 

329,  331,  340-346,  354- 

Tennyson,  56,  59,  372. 

Terriss,  199. 

Terry,  Ellen,  151. 

Thackeray,  131,  132,  268,  276,  279, 
288,  304,  379. 

Theater,  the,  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, 19,  20,  21. 

Theatre  Francais,  192. 

Thersites,  231,  233. 

Theseus,  80,  81,  354. 

Third  Folio,  357. 

Thorndike,   Professor,  207,  208,  238, 

.315,  33?,  331- 
Time,  unity  of,   105,  214,  344-346. 
Timon,  361,  363,  364. 
'Timon  of  Athens,'  52,  53,  347,  349, 

361-364,  365. 
Titania,  78,  81. 
'Titus  Andronicus,'  3,  41,  44,  48,  49, 

50,  51,  54,  64,  89,  137,  203. 
'Tom  Jones,'  141. 
'Tom  Sawyer,'  379. 
Tone,  unity  of,  106. 
Tooley,  Nicholas,  187. 
Torquemada,  47. 

Touchstone,  145, 157,160,161,164,195. 
Tragedy,  Shaksperian,  255,  256. 
Tragedy-of-blood,  the,  44,  45,  46,  47, 

48,_  50,  89,  203,  204,  237,  283,  332. 
Tranio,  138. 
Trinculo,  342,  343. 
Troilus,  230. 
'Troilus  and  Cressida,'  53,  54,  220, 

221,  229,  230-233,  261. 
Troy,  231. 
'Twelfth  Night,'  4,  9,   53,   54,   142, 

143,   144,   159,   161-166,   167,   196, 

200,  201,  202. 
'Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,'  9,  54, 

64,  73-78,  79,  82,  84,  93,  159,  162, 

195,  202. 
'Two  Noble  Kinsmen,'  347,  349,  354- 

357,  361,  365- 
Tybalt,  no,  in,  112. 


INDEX 


399 


'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,'  50. 
Underwood,  John,  187. 
United  States,  197,  305. 
Unities  of  action,  time  and  place,  105, 
214,  344-346. 

Valentine,  74,  75,  76. 

Vega,  Lope  de,  30,  58. 

Venetian  Pantaleone,  the,  138. 

Venice,  144. 

'Venus  and  Adonis,'   3,   7,   64,   223, 

305,  368. 
Verges,  145,  154,  165,  186. 
Vergil,  217,  373. 
Verona,  74,  145,  214,  302. 
Vice,  the,  23,  77,  78. 
Victorian  theater,  278,  294. 
Villains,  stage,  244,  247. 
Viola,  74,  84,  148,  159,  162,  163,  164, 

165,  191,  200,  336,  340,  342. 
Voice,  177. 


Voltaire,  94,  320. 
Volumnia,  271. 


Wagner,  59,  306. 
Walkley,  A.  B.,  228. 
Wallack's  Theater,  173. 
'Way  of  the  World,'  235. 
Webster,  13,  198. 
'Werner,'  Byron's,  56. 
W'ilkins,  358,  359. 

Williams  in  'Henry  V,'  126,  127,  275. 
Wilson,  Jack,  186,  188,  192,  196. 
Windsor,  133,  135. 
'Winter's   Tale,'    53,    185,    325,    331, 
336-340,   342,   344,   353,   354,   356. 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  350,  353. 
W7omen  of  Shakspere's  plays,  380. 
Wright,  Dr.  E.  H.,  362. 
Wycherly,  310. 

York,  44,  93. 


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